Urbana Smart Cities Magazine May-June, 2017

Page 1

Volume # 3

Issue # 3

May-June 2017

Rs.1/-

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA A Smart City’s

FUTURISTIC

CITY AND CONCEPT CAR

Smart Magazine



www.Lntecc.com

L&T's dedicated Smart World & Communication business unit is perfectly placed to build India's next-gen cities. With proven expertise in focused strategy, robust processes and comprehensive, end-to-end solutions for Smart Security Solutions, Smart Communication Networks and Telecom Infrastructure, and Smart Infrastructure. As a Master Systems Integrator, L&T is the only company in India that provides smart, scalable and sustainable systems for urban buildings, public safety, transportation, green energy, superior water supply systems, emergency response and better governance. We can even design processes to select the right technologies, depending on the specific needs of cities. The result: an enhanced quality of urban life.

Track Record • Developed surveillance and intelligent traffic management systems in: Ahmedabad | Gandhinagar | Vadodara • Surveillance and management system for critical infrastructure at Sabarmati Jail • India's largest city surveillance project comprising 6000+ cameras across more than 1500 locations in Mumbai • Built India's first Smart City - Jaipur • Other smart city projects in: Nagpur | Delhi | Lucknow | Hyderabad | Pune

L&T Construction, Smart World & Communication Mount-Poonamallee Road, Manapakkam, P.B. No. 979, Chennai - 600 089 Email: info@Lntecc.com Tel.: +91 44 2252 6000, 2252 8000 Regd. Office: L&T House, N. M. Marg, Ballard Estate, Mumbai - 400 001. INDIA CIN: L99999MH1946PLC004768

A brand of Larsen & Toubro Limited

Clarity/RDP/05/2017

Building India’s Smart Cities – the L&T way


10

SMART TECHNOLOGY Arrow Electronics, federal labs join smart cities tech alliance

14

22 28

SMART TRANSPORTATION REVELATION SKYWAYSTRING TRANSPORT

SMART COMMUNICATION

20

SMART CITIES

INTERNATIONAL

Capacity Building For Smart Yinchuan — China’s first smart city City Development In India:

Honeywell Launches Outcome Based Service For Connected Buildings Management

INTERNATIONAL

‘Smart city’ initiatives can lead to a better environment in Macau

30


SMART CITY NEWS Pg 31-69

08

SMART TECHNOLOGY 5 must have Smart Solutions For Smart Cities

SMART TECHNOLOGY

SMART GOVERNANCE

Honeywell Digital Video Manager Connects Organizations To Smarter Security And Surveillance

Consulting Firm For Smart City Asked To Pace Up Work

Dubai Leads The World As A Smart City

India’s Smart Cities To Get Digital ‘Brain Centres’

SMART TRANSPORTATION Faro Assists In India’s First R&D Project To Modernize Country’s Railway Infrastruture

SMART COMMUNICATION Faster Is Better: Barco Showcases Opspace,Its Patent Pending Opertor Focussed Software Solution!

SMART CITIES

38

SMART INFRASTRUCTURE Competition Growing As Smart Cities Gain Ground

Miniature Models Reflect Beauty Of Smart City Rajkot’s First Step Towards Becoming Smart City Road Map for a Smart Village Tamil Nadu: Smart city projects get green signal Smart city project aims at turn-ing Puducherry into global tourism spot: Narayanasamy

FINANCE Amaravati Smart City Corpn to serve as SPV for greenfield project development Conman dupes trader with Smart City project “offer” 388 cr Sanctioned For Kakinada Smart City: Sujayarun

Smart City Contracts To Show Results By June 2018

SMART ENERGY UP Govt Plans Partnership With Finland for Smart City, Solar Power Projects Roof Power Expands Electrification Of Railways

INTERNATIONAL Auckland’s smart city priorities revealed Nvidia Picks Up Alibaba And Huawei As Partners For Smart City Platform Inside Singapore’s bid to achieve smart city status Orange Romania completes first phase of smart-city pilot project in Alba Iulia

SMART INFRA Maha Signs Pact With South Korea For Infra Projects EESL to replace nearly 50K street lights with LEDs in Gurugram


VOLUME 3 Issue # 3

CEO ANAND GUPTA Anand.Gupta@UrbanaMagazine.com

SALES & MARKETING STUTI JAIN stuti@eqmag.net

EDITORS

PRASOON AGRAWAL Prasoon.Agrawal@urbanamagazine.com

Owner :

SAUMYA GUPTA Saumya@UrbanaMagazine.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS

INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED

ARPITA GUPTA Arpita@UrbanaMagazine.com

FirstSource Energy Place of Publication :

95-C, Sampat Farms, Bicholi Mardana, Distt-Indore 452 016,Madhya Pradesh, INDIA Tel. + 91 96441 22268 Tel. + 91 96441 33319

www.UrbanaWorld.com

PUBLISHER

ANAND GUPTA

PRINTER

GAZALA KHAN gazalakhan.eq@gmail.com

DESIGN & GRAPHIC DIRECTOR ANKIT PANDEY (sahil)

DESIGNER

ANAND VAIDYA

ANAND GUPTA

PUBLISHING COMPANY DIRECTORS ANIL GUPTA & ANITA GUPTA

Disclaimer,Limitations of Liability While every efforts has been made to ensure the high quality and accuracy of Urbana World and all our authors research articles with the greatest of care and attention ,we make no warranty concerning its content,and the magazine is provided on an>> as is <<basis.Urbana World contains advertising and third –party contents. Urbana World is not liable for any third- party content or error,omission or inaccuracy in any advertising material ,nor is it responsible for the availability of external web sites or their contents The data and information presented in this magazine is provided for informational purpose only. neither Urbana World ,Its affiliates,Information providers nor content providers shall have any liability for investment decisions based up on or the results obtained from the information provided. Nothing contained in this magazine should be construed as a recommendation to buy or sale any securities. The facts and opinions stated in this magazine do not constitute an offer on the part of Urbana World for the sale or purchase of any securities, nor any such offer intended or implied.

Restriction on use The material in this magazine is protected by international copyright and trademark laws. You may not modify, copy, reproduce, republish, post, transmit,or distribute any part of the magazine in any way.you may only use material for your personall,Non-Commercial use, provided you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices.If you want to use material for any non-personel,non commercial purpose,you need written permission from Urbana World.


SmartTechnology

DUBAI LEADS THE WORLD AS A SMART CITY There can be no doubt that when it comes to smart services, Dubai is a world leader. Gone are the days of endless queues, the stress and the headache to pay a bill or conduct any other transaction.

N

ow, at the click of a button on your phone you can conduct almost any transaction. It’s that simple. It’s that easy. From renewing your driving licence to paying your electricity bill, these services have become exceptionally smooth and efficient. There were days when one had to set aside a day to pay bills and conduct other transactions like any other city around the world. This would take time and there would be the accompanying stress of running from one office to another waiting in long queues. But smart government has changed all that. And now just for a day on October 26

every year, all Dubai government services will be available only through smart channels. An initiative to encourage people to use various virtual modes, ‘A Day without Service Centres’ programme has been approved by Shaikh Mohammad. The initiative, launched by the Dubai Department of Finance, aims to encourage customers to turn to smart channels to obtain and complete government services and transactions. This yet again proves that Dubai continues to evolve. There is that quest to excel that makes it a world class city, a city always ready for the future.

Smart government and smart services are the vision of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al , This has transformed Dubai into a futuristic city, a model hub for business and a delight for residents. Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 7


SmartTechnology

‘’Smart technologies necessary for Smart Cities”

5 must have

Smart Solutions For Smart Cities

A smarter city is designed to consider the human factor in our community or organization. Our smart city solutions help simplify many common, day-today activities for people. They can also help keep citizens safe and informed when they’re on the go, which, in the past, could prove challenging. A smart city utilizes IoT sensors, actuators and technology to connect components across the city, and it impacts every layer of a city, from underneath the streets, to the air that citizens are breathing. Data from all segments is analyzed, and patterns are derived from the collected data. Though there are numerous technologies essential for the smooth running of Smart City, the below mentioned 5 basic technology are not to miss for success of Government’s smart city plan.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

1

Security Surveillance:

P

ublic security is a growing problem for cities worldwide. Smart cities seek to implement information and communication technologies in order to improve the efficiency and sustainability of urban spaces while reducing costs and resource consumption.VIVOTEK, a Taiwan based security Surveillance Company have worked across Government of India’s smart city initiative. They believe installing video surveillance solutions will become imperative in Smart cities. It will be important to address the safety and security needs of commercial and residential establishments, railway stations, metro rail, airports, city markets and shopping malls; schools and colleges. Moreover, the video analysis from video surveillance system will drive the growth of big data, transforming the security demands to business demands. Video surveillance, fire alarms and protection, access control, intrusion alarm, public address and emergency evacuation systems are some of the important safety and security building blocks for a smart city.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 8


SmartTechnology

2

3

Video Walls for Real -Time Information Update, concerning traffic, weather and local news

B

arco Electronic Systems a Global leaders in connected visualization systems (secured) for professional use is closely working with Smart City project of Government of India and across countries. From traffic management, over security and telecom, to utilities and process control systems, Barco provides the necessary building blocks for a highly reliable control room visualization system. Barco rear-projection video wall modules, high-quality displays, controllers and video wall management software, visually present real-time signals coming from highway sensors, vehicle GPS systems, CCTV cameras and other intelligent systems to the operators. The company’s intitiative for Smart Cities can be summarized in the enclosed points. • Networked visualization for signals coming from CCTV cameras, GPS trackers or sensors • Flexibility to visualize big data on large video walls, PC or even remotely on smart phones • Single command center for all data sources for smarter decision making • Situational awareness and improved situation management for safe cities

www.UrbanaWorld.com

4

5

Cyber Security:

A

s we build our digital infrastructure, whether its cloud infrastructure and the data center or mobile infrastructure, security has to be part of it. With the Digital India initiative including e-governance, m-governance and Smart Cities and rapidly growing eCommerce, security becomes a very critical component that needs to be in-built in these initiatives. Paladion Networks, a cyber security management company helps in managing the right kind of security defences required for Smart Home, Smart Traffic Management, Smart Roadways, Smart Transport etc.

Smart Parking

P

arking apps that show drivers where the nearest available parking spot is of immense necessity for Smart City. These will save commuters time, gas, emissions and money, while also easing the flow of traffic. PParkE’s sensor-based comprehensive smart parking solution with ‘Make in India’ sensor is specifically designed to meet the growing parking conditions in India.

A city guide app

W

ith information about museums, parks, landmarks, public art, restaurants and real-time traffic dataTriposo offers a handy travel guide app focused on what to do and what to see in Indian cities. It is the best alternative to heavy guide books for travelers on the go across India. Triposo’s customized mobile application addresses all basic queries regarding where to dine, where to stay, where to relax, what to buy, what to eat, etc. The best advantage of this travel app is that it functions online. It provides maps and weather details of Indian cities too.

Smart Parking

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 9


SmartTechnology

Arrow Electronics, federal labs join smart cities tech alliance

A By : GREG AVERY Reporter : Denver Business Journal

rrow Electronics and research organizations have joined the Denver-metro area alliance formed to help local communities ado pt effective ‘smart cities’ technologies. Centennial-based Arrow the technology sales and distribution giant, will assist municipalities in sorting out ‘internet of things’ technologies, drawing on Arrow’s experience working on product design and technology distribution with more than 800 technology suppliers and 125,000 purchasing companies worldwide. The Denver South Economic Development Partnership, the lead economic development agency for the southern metro-area suburbs, formed The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance earlier this year. More than a dozen Front Range municipalities — including Denver, Aurora, Littleton, Boulder, Lone Tree, Greenwood Village and Colorado Springs — joined the alliance at its founding.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

“We view our primary role as an advisor,” said Aiden Mitchell, vice president of global IoT solutions with Arrow. “Because we have all these technology companies, we can be agnostic and neutral.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 10


SmartTechnology

I

t has since attracted the Colorado Technology Association, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the National Renewable Energy Lab and the University of Colorado as participating members. The term ‘smart city’ technology refers emerging internet-connected devices and infrastructure that collects data that allows communities to make transportation, energy, land and resource use and other aspects of life more efficient.

It’s also expected to give rise to new kinds of consumer and government services. The technologies could help Colorado cities handle the addition of an expected 3 million new residents by 2050, according to said Jake Rishavy, vice president of innovation at the Denver South Economic Development Partnership.

“We’re working to create a 21st-century technology infrastructure right here in Colorado that will help to enhance everyone’s quality of life, particularly as our communities continue to grow,” Rishavy said in a statement.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

S

mart cities technologies are mashing together consumer electronics, infrastructure and computing systems and are early in their evolution. Arrow can help cities research what products are available or that companies have in development for different applications and understand broader compatibility of different technologies. The alliance is the first such partnership around IoT technologies that Arrow has joined, Mitchell said.

A

rrow likely will learn a lot from its involvement, he said, and the company will also benefit as an employer from area municipalities investing intelligently in IoT adoption. Communities that adopt ‘smart city’ technologies effectively will become draws for industry and technology employees, he said.

“They’re really going to improve the competitiveness of their communities both locally and internationally,” he said. “Now they’re expanding the alliance to include companies like Arrow and universities because they’re looking [to] answer what [smart cities] execution will look like.”

Arrow, the state’s largest company by revenue, employs about 1,750 in the southern Denver metro area out of about 18,500 employees worldwide. It handles the distribution of billions of electronics components between semiconductor makers and the final electronics manufacturers, often helping the designers of products source components and engineer products to reflect the latest in technologies coming available. Arrow also helps large companies select and design computer and data center systems they purchase. The involvement of UCAR brings to the alliance the UCAR-led Innovation Corridor initiative, an organization of Colorado federal research labs with two of the world’s fastest super computers and unique energy system modeling capabilities.

“All of these assets, as well as access to the world’s finest researchers in their respective subject matter areas, can be at the disposal of the alliance members,” said Eric Drummond, president of Formativ, a founder of the Innovation Corridor.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 11


SmartTechnology

Honeywell Digital Video Manager Connects Organizations To Smarter Security And Surveillance Latest release of video technology taps Internet of Things, building connectivity and open standards to improve operator efficiency, drive deeper insights and speed response times

H

oneywell a global leader in connected buildings, announced an enhanced version of Honeywell Digital Video Manager (DVM) that offers smarter security and surveillance capabilities for today’s increasingly complex building environments. The new release, DVM R620, enables organizations to more easily secure large-scale security operations with features that improve operator efficiency and situational awareness for faster incident identification and resolution, and power more accurate and reliable security operations. DVM R620 is well suited for a range of facilities, including complex security installations with stringent requirements—such as airports,

www.UrbanaWorld.com

correctional facilities, hospitals, higher education campuses, and smart cities. It features an enhanced user interface and includes major updates to how operators can capture, access and manage live and recorded video, reliably and efficiently. Based on a highly available distributed architecture, the system features edge recording playback and backfill capabilities, capturing video footage on camera memory cards, and then backfilling the footage to the system’s main server. These features make the system more resilient in response to interruptions ranging from routine system maintenance, to network or server failures and cybersecurity issues, and ensure

cameras more consistently and reliably capture video footage, wherever they are located. In addition, DVM R620 includes an improved and more intuitive user interface and features that improve the user experience, making it easier to learn and operate, which helps improve operator productivity for faster incident response. New productivity features include bookmarking, which lets operators easily annotate and navigate video footage. This enables faster footage identification and retrieval for evidentiary purposes— critical in today’s security environments, which can include thousands of cameras capturing hours of footage.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 12


SmartTechnology

DVM R620 also supports open standards like the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) standard, driving deeper levels of interoperability and connectivity so organizations can more easily integrate an even wider range of video cameras and third-party systems like analytics as they adapt to changing security threats.In addition to improved resiliency, usability and interoperability, DVM R620 enables organizations to

Seamlessly authenticate video footage – When exporting video for evidence purposes, operators can add watermarks or use digital signatures to prove video authenticity and its source, reducing the need for third-party applications.

“As buildings become smarter, driven by trends like the Internet of Things and our increasingly connected world, security operations must follow suit. This can be a tall order, however, when you consider the scope and size of today’s connected organizations—and the number of cameras and other endpoints personnel must manage,” said Aseem Joshi,

Keep footage secure – DVM R620 exports footage in password-protected files to promote safety and security.

Country General Manager, Honeywell Building Solutions, India. “DVM R620 serves as a conduit for improved operator productivity and risk mitigation, leveraging connectivity for smarter surveillance that can more easily grow and expand as needs change and evolve.”

DVM is a component of Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI), an award-winning building management system that ties all aspects of a security solution together, including video surveillance, access control, and intrusion detection. EBI also integrates comfort, life safety, energy and other core

facility controls, providing users a single point of access to the essential information and resources needed to monitor, manage and protect a facility, campus or multi-site operation. As a result, security operators have improved visibility and intelligence, and the ability to deploy their staff and resources more efficiently and

www.UrbanaWorld.com

effectively. DVM and EBI are designed to work with systems from Honeywell Home and Building Technologies, which creates products, software and technologies found in more than 10 million buildings worldwide. Its connected buildings services help make facilities more comfortable, intuitive and productive.

Use network and hardware resources more efficiently – The system uses a lower resolution for video streams, freeing up valuable network bandwidth and requiring less from individual monitors for decompressing and video rendering. As a result, organizations can lower hardware costs and view more cameras within a single view.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 13


SmartTransportation

5 QUESTIONS ABOUT SMART CITIES EXPO

REVELATION SKY WAYSTRING TRANSPORT

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 14


SmartTransportation

S

mart Cities Expo in New Delhi traditionally opens new names in the field of innovative transportation. This year one of such openings is SkyWay Technologies Co. from Belarus, which attracted the attention of both professional community and local authorities from different regions in India. String Transport (also known as Yunitskiy String Transport and Rail Sky Way) is an elevated transportation system (cargo & passenger) which uses a rail filled with special composite and rolling stock of own design.

At present, the SkyWay has started the preliminary research in India in two directions: in the state of Jharkhand and in the state of Himachal Pradesh.

T

Mr. Sudhir Sharma Minister of Housing, Urban Development and Town and Country Planning

he delegation from the Dharamsala municipality headed by Mr. Sudhir Sharma, Minister of Housing, Urban Development and Town and Country Planning in the Government of Himachal Pradesh, has already paid a visit to the SkyWay test site based in Belarus. The Minister and his colleagues saw the urban transport system being tested and highly estimated the technology potential for its implementation in India. SkyWay projects can be adopted on a large scale nationwide through the Smart Cities state program. The Smart Cities mission was developed by the Parliament of the country with the purpose of renovation and modification of urban environment. Its aim is to create 109 cities with infrastructure for friendly and stable society. It is implemented by the Ministry of Urban Development and city authorities, whereas the Parliament delivers the program through the creation of “smart� satellites close to large centers. The Smart Linear City concept proposed by the SkyWay can become the leading technology for the creation of the satellite network.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

SKYWAY UNIBIKE

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 15


SmartTransportation

Victor Baburin, Deputy Director for business development of SkyWay Technologies Co., has given answers to 5 main questions about the SkyWay.

What is the potential of the Indian smart cities market?

What are the challenges and opportunities your company is facing in the course of its development?

There is hardly such a huge smart cities market in the world as in India. Some countries can be compared to India in terms of territory; however, no other government seems to be really concerned about the sustainable development of their cities. The Smart Cities mission is a revolutionary approach, which makes the Indian market the world’s number one and therefore should be established as a standard in world’s leading countries.

Workinginthefieldof innovations, the main challenge is always the resistance of transport bureaucratic circles. We see our main opportunity in the synergy of Eastern and Western professionals as well as in the constructive collaboration of governmental and business circles. Just before the conference, Minsk hosted a delegation of Dharamsala city municipality headed by Mr.Sudhir Sharma, Urban Development Minister of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where this city is situated. The guests visited a demonstration and certification centerEcoTechnoPark, a pilot production factory and project design bureaus of our company, they saw unibike and unibus performance trials on

www.UrbanaWorld.com

the track structure. The main opportunities are to show the SkyWaytechnology in operation and openly discuss its advantages compared to other transport systems. The company is now actively developing and improving the basic design features of SkyWay transport and infrastructure complexes to operate in the conditions of mountainous terrain like in Himachal Pradesh in Northern India. Collaborating with state programs like Smart Cities and meeting their standards is a useful experience to be taken into consideration in order to pay extra special attention to the detailed implementation of the “smart city” concept when constructing the SkyWay transport system in Dharamsala. This is the greatest opportunity – to gain the experience, which can then be adopted in practice in numerous cities and countries.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 16


SmartTransportation

What is the current situation of the smart cities market in India?

What are the key achievements of your company for the last 10 years?

The smart cities market in India is young and is full of new possibilities and proposed solutions. Success in this field is primarily based on transport solutions. The road network in today’s India covers more than 4.5 million kilometers. ‘Rolled up’ in asphalt and ‘buried” under railway sleepers is fertile soil, equal in its area to the territories of three countries, such as Israel. On the territory ten times larger, soils along roads are degraded and contaminated with carcinogens.

The technology is based on years of scientific research and experiments carried out by AnatoliYunitski and his engineering team. The proactive period forthe certification test site – EcoTechnoPark construction – started in 2015.

However, all this can be avoided in a state that is willing to embrace a solution like Smart Linear Cities (SLC). We propose a ready and complex solution based on SkyWay transport and infrastructure systems. We envisage an entirely pedestrian city of a cluster type, about 1 km in diameter, with up to 10,000 inhabitants. The India Smart Cities market should start developing from small towns and villages and make all the way to megalopolises. Smart Linear Cities are built in the logic of accessibility for pedestrians, within 500 m from the center. In the center, there is a dominating building, through which all communication lines pass – SkyWay string tracks located above the ground, i.e. on the “second level”. Interchange stations to transfer from urban tracks (speed – up to 150 km/h) to high-speed intercity tracks (speed – up to 500 km/h) are also available there. The SkyWay is ready to implement this solution on the territory of India.

Currently the team of technical experts headed by AnatoliYunitski is successfully developing a demonstration and certification center of SkyWay transport –EcoTechnoPark –on the territory of Belarus. The land plot of 36 ha in the town of MaryinaGorka, Minsk region, has prototypes of tracks and infrastructure facilities offering the opportunity to see what SkyWay String Transport looks like and how it works. The key technologies demonstrated by now have already aroused considerable interest among customers and actually proved the relevance and demand of SkyWay solutions. One of the first to get interested in SW technologies were representatives of Australia. In 2016, support was gained from the companies Rоd Hook and Associates, MbM and Aurecon. Together with them SkyWay started to work on the preparation of the basis for the construction of string routes in this country. After the demonstration of SkyWay rolling stock industrial designs at the InnoTrans 2016International trade fair for transport technology held in Berlin in September 2016, the willingness to cooperate was expressed by representatives of India, Turkey, the Philippines and other countries. Negotiations started that brought their results in a short time.

Could you tell us about your company’s strategy in the future? The SkyWay’swork in India unfolds in a number of directions, with numerous authorities and regions.Our projects can be adopted on a large scale nationwide through the Smart Cities state program and we will makeefforts to advocate the SkyWay Smart Linear Cities to the stateprogram. The SmartCities mission is implemented by the Ministry of Urban Development along with city authorities; therefore, our negotiations on the proposed technology are now in progress. Considering that the Parliament delivers the program through the creation of “smart” satellites close to large centers, the Smart Linear City concept proposed by the SkyWay has the potential to become the leading technology for the creation of the satellite network. India is an initial platform for SkyWay transport and Linear Cities systems. Right now, we are at the starting point of a big way we have to pass. An ecological and safety approach makesSkyWay the best solution for the sustainable development of the planet.

SKYWAY UNIBUS

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 17


SmartTransportation

Faro Assists In India’s First R&D Project To Modernize Country’s Railway Infrastruture In addition, the range and accuracy levels of the Focus3D also gave the research team confidence that they would reap the type of results they needed. Featuring an extra-long scanning range from 0.6 m up to 330 m, the Focus3D has a distance accuracy of up to 2 mm, which was exceptionally useful for the team’s application, given that they needed to capture minute details for the railway research.

Providing a Laser Scanning Solution More Efficient Than Photogrammetry

Foreword The importance of having the right equipment for a job cannot be underestimated. In a surveying and mapping project, the access to advanced 3D laser scanning technology can make a world of difference to the study outcome. A group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), honored by the India Government as an Institute of National Importance, experienced this first hand when conducting a study on India’s railway infrastructure.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Dr. Kamal Jain, Professor from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, initiated the research project in hopes of providing the Ministry of Railways with insights on India’s current railway infrastructure and recommendations for improvements on the tracks, signaling, and stations and terminals. Dr. Jain, shared, “So far, no other institution has conducted a similar study in India. This project has huge potential in shaping the country’s future railway infrastructure, and it is imperative that we present results that are most accurate and objective, so as to facilitate progress.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 18


SmartTransportation

FARO’s Focus3D > Photogrammetry

Scan data acquired by the FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D X 330.

The First Step An expert in surveying and photogrammetry, Dr. Jain understood that one of the first and most crucial steps in carrying out the research was to select a reliable and effective surveying solution. A part of Dr. Jain’s research work revolved around comparing traditional photogrammetry with modern laser scanning solutions, and it was clear to him that the success of this project would require a high-precision, high-speed device. Scanning an entire railway platform with photogrammetry can be a time-consuming activity as complex calculations are involved. Additionally, the research team had to take into account several considerations, including overhead power lines, entities on the railway platform (e.g. escalators, shops, and information centers), diversions on track, and the frequency of arriving and departing trains. For these reasons, and for the fact that a large area of study was involved, Dr. Jain decided on utilizing laser scanning technology. The research team at IIT Roorkee had ready access to the FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D X Series as the university had linked up with FARO earlier, to provide students with a first-hand experience of 3D measurement and documentation solutions. “It’s a good thing that our students get to utilize some the latest laser scanning technology available in the market. Considering the scan volume and complexities involved, as well as the level of accuracy we were gunning for, the Focus3D was the obvious choice. Most importantly, it could provide us with a much-needed time advantage for this project, accelerating the research process,” Dr. Jain explained.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Designed for fast and exact three-dimensional documentation, the FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D X 330 opened up a world of possibilities for the research team at IIT Roorkee. The compact and lightweight Focus3D enables indoor and outdoor scanning, performing well even in direct sunlight. This feature proved to be vital as the team can carry on with data acquisition, regardless of lighting conditions. In addition, the range and accuracy levels of the Focus3D also gave the research team confidence that they would reap the type of results they needed. Featuring an extra-long scanning range from 0.6 m up to 330 m, the Focus3D has a distance accuracy of up to 2 mm, which was exceptionally useful for the team’s application, given that they needed to capture minute details for the railway research.

Using the Focus3D, Dr. Jain and his research team was able to completely scan the Roorkee Railway Station and its surrounding areas in a matter of 10 days. In order to capture as-built documentation on all aspects of the railway system, scans had to be taken from different angles, and the Focus3D had to be constantly repositioned. In total, the team obtained nearly 50 scans that covered a distance of over eight kilometers, with each scan taking only 30 minutes from set-up to completion. In a typical day spent onsite for data collection, the research team conducted six to seven scans, concluding the scanning process within 10 days. Dr. Jain added, “If not for the portable Focus3D and its accompanying SCENE software, we might have had to spend 30 days outfield just to collect data. This is a vast improvement!”

Establishing the Benchmark

Point cloud data of the railway platform.

As the Government contemplates doubling existing railway lines, the research results will influence future railway infrastructure strategies for India. “Knowing the urgency and importance of this research, we strived to depict a most accurate presentation of our current railway situation. The Focus3D enabled us to accurately capture scan data quickly, and t was an ideal addition to this roject,” Dr.

Jain shared as he highlighted the high level of accuracy and documentation speed of FARO’s scanner. Apart from the added advantage of providing point cloud data simultaneously with every scan, the Focus3D also offered IIT Roorkee with a complete, stitched 3D map. When shared with the Government, this data can be easily integrated into a 3D smart city data file for the country. Dr. Jain concluded, “It is easy to see why the Focus3D is so popular worldwide. This project was initially considered challenging in terms of the duration. However, the device provided such a tremendous amount of advantage that we were able to finish our scanning and documentation tasks efficiently. No doubt, we would definitely use the Focus3D again in future surveying projects.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 19


SmartCommunication

Honeywell Launches Outcome Based Service For Connected Buildings Management “Data provides valuable insights about building health if you have the right combination of technology and expertise to efficiently gather and analyze it,” said Aseem Joshi, regional general manager of Honeywell Building Solutions in India.

Cloud-based connected buildings service draws from the collective power of Internet of Things technologies, mobile applications, and Honeywell’s service engineers

Smart services suite taps building connectivity to prioritze maintenance activities to optimize facility performance and reduce cost

H

oneywell (NYSE: HON) introduced a new cloud-enabled building management service that prioritizes the most impactful maintenance activities to optimize building performance. Combining advanced automation and data analytics, Outcome Based Service enables Honeywell service engineers to watch building assets around the clock, identifying anomalies faster than traditional maintenance, saving them time and money. Without close monitoring, en-

ergy consumption can drift by up to 7 percent annually. The service taps building connectivity and sensors to ensure that building equipment is performing at its best. Early pilots show reduction in energy spend and reactive service calls. “With Outcome Based Service, Honeywell makes the most of internet connectivity to essentially listen to what a connected building has to say, providing actionable insights to improve performance. Instead of repeatedly reviewing a time-consuming checklist, the Honeywell Outcome Based Service optimizes efficiency and tracks performance real time.”

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Outcome Based Service provides the following actionable insights:

Real-Time Analytics – Honeywell’s analytics evaluates facility data real-time to find issues faster, improve performance and efficiency, decreasing maintenance time. Dynamic Tasking – Instead of routine scheduled inspections, analytics prioritize maintenance of higher-impact activities, mitigating downtime and improving operational efficiencies. Performance Dashboards and Reports – The easy-touse, cloud-based interface monitors building performance against an organization’s Key Performance Indicators. Lifecycle Management – An actionable roadmap with predictable costs keeps systems current and IT-compliant, providing efficient virus and patch updates. Continuous Service Improvement – Systematic reviews prevent and eradicate problems, reduce critical incidents and downtime.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 20


SmartCommunication

Faster Is Better: Barco Showcases Opspace, Its Patent Pending OpeRtor Focussed Software Solution! Demonstrates the capabilities of the state-of-the-art collaborative solution to partners, end-users, and consultants at a premium event in Bangalore

B

arco, a global leader in professional visualisation and networking solutions, has recently conducted a cutting-edge training module for system integrators and end-users in Bangalore. the premium event was attended by over 30 Barco partners and consultants, as well as more than 50 end-users. Barco also utilised the opportunity to showcase OpSpace, its patent-pending operator-focussed technology, demonstrating how mission critical control rooms can benefit by optimising operator efficiency and enhancing operational effectiveness. OpSpace is the first visual workspace software solution that creates a single operational canvas by combining any number of existing displays on operators’ desks and allows them to view, monitor, and interact with multiple operational systems possibly residing on different secured networks. By allowing all relevant information to be consulted and manipulated within a single pixel space with just one mouse and keyboard, this state-of-the-art software solution puts the operator at the centre of the information flow with all their subsystems within easy reach. Operators can launch and interact with any application in the work area with just one click, while maintaining an overview of all the other applications in their peripheral vision for total situational awareness. This provides a more ergonomic, efficient, and intuitive way of working, and aids in lowering stress levels while enabling better decision-making and time management.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Speaking on the announcement, Tanuj Bhatnagar, Director Sales, said, “OpSpace is a visionary technology that has completely revolutionised the way control room operators interact with various legacy system, subsystems, and applications around the world. This is what we wanted to highlight with this demonstration, which received an impressive response with our partners and end-users for enabling unparalleled operator efficiencies. We are confident that the interest generated at the event for this state-of-the-art collaborative solution will translate into significant market traction in India.�

OpSpace also allows operators to individually manage different security clearances and liability concerns in a hassle-free manner. In addition to showcasing OpSpace capabilities, Barco also held personalised demo sessions for participants allowed them to experience how it can boost operational effectiveness and efficiency. The company also conducted demonstrations for its virtual reality (VR) solutions, as well as its flagship collaboration solution, ClickShare, at the event.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 21


SmartCities

Capacity Building For Smart City Development In India: Where Do We Stand?

W Author: Radha Krishna Tripathy CUTS Institute for Regulation and Competition

ith an outlay of INR 48000 crores for 500 cities under AMRUT and INR 50000 crores for 100 Smart Cities initiative, Government of India is targeting to address the growing challenges of rapid urbanization in a sustainable manner. The objective of AMRUT is to provide basic services and amenities in cities relating to water supply, sewerage, septage management, storm water drains, transport and development of green spaces and parks with special provision for meeting the needs of children. The implementation of this scheme will be linked to urban reforms like e-governance, development of management systems and constitution of professional municipal cadre etc. The Smart Cities program of the government targets retrofitting, redevelopment of specific themes based area development under the identified city and overall pan city initiatives. It would target core infrastructure services like adequate and clean water supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, Efficient Urban Mobility and Public Transportation, Affordable housing for the poor, power supply, robust IT connectivity, Governance, especially e-governance and citizen participation, safety and security of citizens, health and education and sustainable urban environment. Smart City Action Plans will be implemented by Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) to be created for each city and state governments will ensure a steady stream of resources for SPVs. Under the Smart Cities Mission, a central assistance of Rs.100 crore per year for five years is linked to all selected cities based on a ‘City Challenge Competition’. Several cities were awarded under these initiatives. While the award of smart cities progressed in a smooth way, the real challenges will be in executing the

www.UrbanaWorld.com

projects in a timely manner. Under this scheme, the implementation would be the responsibility of city administration or ULBs. The success of these plans would be based on cities’ own resources, human capacities, ability to generate funds and preparedness to implement the programs at ground level. This will not be possible without sensitizing and moreover training of the city official’s about the complexity of the project, its cross sectoral dynamics linked to SDGs. The central government initiatives need to be matched with parlance with state government and ULB’s preparedness to execute the same with an equal zeal and vigor. The cross functional requirements of the schemes, convergence with other parallel schemes and projects require all functional units under city administration including engineers, urban planners ,

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 22


SmartCities

CURRENT PREPAREDNESS OF ULBS:

AMRUT stands for Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation. The objective is to make urban areas more livable and inclusive. ( Sustainable Development Goals under UN charter for 2030, 17 goals identified) architects, designers come to a common platform to raise their levels of understanding through a culture of learning and experience sharing among one another.

U

LBs face several challenges such as low budgetary support, lack of technical and managerial staffs, autonomy to plan and execute key projects, lack of designing internal institutional structures to carry out such program in large scales and lack of professional structure to drive schemes of such stature. They were never exposed to such scale and size of the programs earlier and face a gigantic task currently. There is also a fear psychosis on the ability to carry on these tasks smoothly. Though central government and state government are trying their best to augment the skill sets, these are not enough. As of now, capacity building has been accorded a low priority under city administration function and there is hardly any budget to run these programs. The traditional way is to follow orders, float tenders on some existing specification and award projects under tradi-

tional bidding procedures. There is hardly any mechanism for quality checks and monitoring of the projects on a continuous basis. The level of involvement required for putting things in perspective for the programs under AMRUT and Smart City requires a higher level of understanding from the city officials which are at this stage is abysmally low. To start with ULBs may be sensitized to acquire skills in basic computer operation to manage phone based grievance systems and a dedicated unit to handle it. Simultaneously, they may engage with the community to help them understand the technological advancements in addressing city based grievance and use of smart meters in water and electricity etc. This may be a good beginning before adopting a comprehensive, complex skill sets on various tools and models.

CHALLENGES IN LEARNING NEW SKILLS:

O

ld methods would not work as this requires a completely new set of skills. These projects are continuously shifting towards PPP (Public Private Partnership) models and innovative financing mechanisms, alternate financing etc. This is largely due to the financial distress of the states where in state governments are struggling to put in monetary assistance for these projects. In this scenario, the level of understanding on these subjects requires constant hand-holding of experts in these fields to drive it. Although the core component of the training will remain same throughout the cities, it would differ on city specific training module for which there will be customization of some training modules... Also, there might be challenges in terms of adoption of the language, the skill level of city officials, existing infrastructure to support the training and the nature of presentation in terms of content design and duration of the programs. Though there are central level institutes and state level administrative training institutes which are mandated to prepare an extensive plan by establishing urban management centers, these may fall short with the absence

www.UrbanaWorld.com

of the required level of experts in these specialized fields. The capacity development programs will be based on outcome based results which are completely different from traditional training programs. The linking of outputs to different goals under sustainable development and integrating to other areas for a comprehensive outcome would be difficult challenges before the city administration. Currently, very few ULB officials are being trained in a continuous manner and that to on the basic structure of the central programs and schemes. There are no specialized training courses for them on the emerging issues of public private partnership and innovative financing.

Without knowledge of these key aspects, it seems that ULBs are directionless in implementing the schemes. Thus, it is necessary that state governments take initiative to formulate strategies to partner with bilateral and multilateral agencies to impart this core training with the help of professional agencies in this domain.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 23


SmartCities

THE WAY FORWARD:

This demands a complete overhaul in terms of designing the new system.

W

hile many workshops, consultations are underway to understand the Smart City concept and how that can be achieved, the ground level reality is rarely discussed. In many of the programs, the critical link (i.e) ULB administrations are missing that are very critical for the implementation of these programs. This demands a complete overhaul in terms of designing the new system. Skill development and capacity building should be a parallel activity running simultaneously with the awareness development programs so that once all necessary background works are in place, field level activities can be started without wasting any further time on the capacity building of the ULB personals. The new concepts like PPP and

innovative financing requires hand-holding of experts from the conceptual level and it demands considerable time to understand the nuances of the tools. The right framework for negation under PPP, contract management, laws and regulations related to PPP, negotiation skills, and alternative ways of generating revenues for any project are crucial aspects of these concepts. Until unless expert institutions in these fields including consulting organizations, research institutes, NGOs, Civil Society organizations are taken into confidence and given the mandate to work with ULB officials under proper policy frameworks to carry out necessary training and capacity building from the conceptual level, the success can only be half guaranteed.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Road Map for a Smart Village I am lucky to spend some time in a village near Gurgaon trying to clean it & then offer them Waste Management solutions. What I have learnt recently I will like to share it with you.

AuthorAmarjit Singh Bindra Greentech Waste Management Limited Smart Cities Solutions

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 24


SmartCities

1.

Indian Villages are in dire need of clean drinking water.

2.

They need more than one school in order to achieve desired level of literacy.

3.

They need Solar Energy facility & can also do with Bio Gas plants which can give them clean energy at economical rates.

4.

All Villages need a temple & a Kund or a pond which acts as a focal point for their religion practices & beliefs.

5.

All Villagers need medical facilities & specially a Lady doctor as Women don`t prefer to go out of their homes for day to day medical help.

6.

They need Waste Management solutions & their Village Johar , a traditional place for bathing & washing needs to be cleaned with help of Pumps & Machines.

7.

They need an agency to educate them on No Plastics usage.

8.

Villages also need exposure to Recycling their waste & making Waste a revenue source.

9.

A Village needs Play ground and an Akhara for the young Bodybuilders.

10.

A Village needs a helping hand , A guiding Light & a NGO who dedicates at least a day in a week to engage Villagers to get to the next level where they understand & start appreciating the need to breathe clean Air, Drink clean water & keep their Village neat & clean.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Banega Swachh India ! Commander who Cares ! Greentech Waste Management Solutions is there with you all the time. MNC s based in Gurgaon should come forward & adopt at least one village near Gurgaon to make it Smart.

I hope Honeywell, ICRA,JLL, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Dell, Microsoft, IBM, IL & FS, L&T, Hero, Honda & Maruti are listening.

Banega Swachh Mera India !

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 25


SmartCities

Miniature Models Reflect Beauty Of Smart City

G

Nivedita Ganguly

Expo showcases the best of Vizag’s infrastrucure projects A mini cityscape of some of most iconic places of Visakhapatnam and a glimpse of the upcoming grandiose infrastructure projects await visitors at this unique exhibition on the Beach Road, opposite Hotel Novotel.

iving people a three-dimensional perspective of the city’s glory, the Visakha Smart City Exhibition that was inaugurated here recently has on display around 70 miniature models showcasing the best of the city. The various miniature sections include models of health city, education city, IT sector, proposed infrastructure projects, tourism spots, industrial belt and district administration offices of the city. Iconic structures such as KGH, educational institutions like Andhra University and St.Joseph’s Convent, tourism spots of the

“The main idea behind the exhibition was to showcase different projects, major monuments and structures and beauty of the city through miniature models. Tourists will be able to see what to look out for in Vizag,” said N. Gopinath, the man behind the Smart City Miniature Exhibition. It took nearly two months to prepare the models, some of which had been sourced from the Internet and a few others were developed with the support of GVMC. “I first discussed the idea with the Collector, who found it unique and encouraged me to go ahead. We have put in about Rs. 30 lakh to make the entire set,” said Mr Gopinath.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

region and upcoming projects like the new look of the airport post expansion, the new golf course and some proposed infrastructural projects are displayed at the exhibition, giving a re-imagined cityscape of Vizag. The exhibition included miniature models of proposed major projects in the city such as the much-hyped three-level flyover at NAD Junction. The miniature model of the proposed flyover showcases six-lane vehicle underpass and flyovers at two different levels.

The exhibition which was inaugurated has been drawing a steady stream of visitors. “There are many places which we have never seen, but only read in newspapers. For instance, we never saw the health city or the Vizag Steel Plant till now. The models give a three-dimensional perspective that we don’t get to feel in pictures. This is almost as good as visiting the places,” said V. Ravi, visitor to the exhibition.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 26


SmartCities

Rajkot’s First Step Towards Becoming Smart City

S

aurashtra’s financial hub Rajkot took its first step towards becoming a Smart City with launch of the pan city surveillance project — Rajkot Eye Way — to improve public safety, surveillance, traffic management, public services with real time tracking of solid waste management, environment pollution, drainage, water level in dams to name a few. The first phase of the Rs 69 crore project was dedicated to the people by chief minister Vijay Rupani on Friday. The project is joint venture of Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) and Rajkot city police. With this launch, Rajkot becomes the first city in the state to integrate public services, traffic management and other services using technology.

“It will have manyfold benefits across the government departments with increased operational and financial efficiency. City and community centre facilities will have improved connectivity for providing online services, while police department will get high-quality video for surveillance to check crime and effective management of traffic,” he added. Pani said that the city administration and police will keep watch on the city through a network of 500 CCTV high resolution cameras that can be controlled from an Integrated Command & Control Centre (ICCC) at Nava Mava. “There will be 128 cameras that can pan, zoom and tilt, while special 18 cameras which can capture 360 degree view have

www.UrbanaWorld.com

been placed at strategic locations. Rest all are fixed cameras,” Pani said. Besides, an Automatic Number Plate Recognition System (ANPRS) and Red Light Violation Detection (RLVD) will also be in place. The RMC will be using Geo Fencing technology, where in sensors will be placed near open civic land so that nobody can encroach upon it. “There are 28 parameters that have been covered under the Eye Way project from traffic management to drainage and water level in dams. The surveillance will help police in fighting crime and also act as deterrent for criminals as they will could be traced easily,” Pani said.

“The project will provide high quality, reliable and cost effective infrastructure for surveillance, parking, traffic monitoring, environment sensing, digital boards, Wi-Fi hotspots and high speed connectivity,” said RMC commissioner Banchha Nidhi Pani.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 27


International

Yinchuan — China’s first smart city The administrators of Yinchuan take the whole city as a unit for planning purposes. This is done in pursuit of three core objectives: governance, life and industry

S M HAli

Founder and Chairman Valluri Technology Accelerators

www.UrbanaWorld.com

T

his scribe has visited most of China but this was the first visit to Yinchuan, which came as a pleasant surprise. Located in central North West China, Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Having visited the most advanced cities and provinces to the East and still developing ones in the West, Yinchuan was like a whiff of fresh air. It was expected that being a province where the ethnic minority group Hui reside, it will be a backward place. Seeing is believing and the truth is to the contrary.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 28


International

Yinchuan has the unique honour of becoming China’s first metropolis to regulate as a ‘Smart City’ on October 1, 2016. The concept was first introduced as “Smart Planet” by IBM in November 2008. Singapore established a ten years’ plan called ‘Smart Country’, which aims to be the first smart country. In 2013, China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development decided to gradually establish 600 smart cities. Yinchuan took the lead in registering as the first ‘Smart City’ in China. The perception of smart city employs intelligence from data mining, which collects information from the government, corporate sector and individuals, resulting in forming the big data, in order to analyse and export directional results which are utilised by the departments of the city in intelligent management and operation. The city of Yinchuan takes the whole city as the unit for top-level design, based on three core objectives: governance, life and industry. Following the six major support structure, “the top-level design, business model, management model, full-time supervision, legislation protection and system reform”, Yinchuan mapped out the smart government affairs, smart transportation, smart environmental protection, smart community and other sub-modules to solve the smart city’s problems. The focus has transcended from smart governance to smart life.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

The Yinchuan Industrial Park has been designed to meet the specific needs of the Smart City. Facilities are provided to industrialists and investors, with preference to those that support higher ecological standards and contribute to big data The Smart City concept is regulated and monitored with the help of real time mapping and visual reconnaissance for the monitoring of activities in various buildings, facilities at the Urban Management Command Centre, which gives the appearance of a scene from a space age movie. The concept of a smart city, which till now was a figment of the imagination, is now a reality, utilising information technology and big data. Yinchuan has been transformed into a futuristic city, promoting development pattern, improving economic structure, optimisation and upgrading to a smart city. Yinchuan closely surrounds four cores of information benefitting the people, scientific management, industry derivation and returns on investment, and generates five characteristics of mode, management mode, technical architecture, system guarantee and local legislation. It has evolved its own unique features in construction of modules in 10 key areas of smart government affairs, smart transportation, smart environmental protection and so on. Yinchuan Hall of Citizens is an eye opener. Under one roof, all the basic requirements of a citizen are being met with the utmost ease. From travel documents, to identification card to business licenses, at the click of a button, the document is printed, signed and received, saving the citizens’ time, botheration and cutting bureaucratic red tape. It was amazing to observe a flat system of management rather than a tall hierarchy. The Yinchuan Industrial Park has been designed to meet the specific needs of the Smart City. Facilities are provided to industrialists and investors, with preference to those who support

higher ecological standards and contribute to big data. Some industries showcased to this scribe comprised a water purification plant. It is a resolve of the government to ensure water purification systems for the entire community by 2025. Another service is smart medical support, which comprises online medical assistance, affording the facility to contact physicians, who can examine patients online, prescribe medicines and for more serious cases, make appointments for physical examination, diagnosis, admission to medical facilities and even have qualified surgeons fly in from other more renowned medical centers to perform the operation, all at the touch of a button or a phone call away. Traffic regulation and monitoring of the environment for air, water and noise pollution systems are also being manufactured and distributed at the industrial park. The entire smart city of Yinchuan is equipped with state-of-theart garbage disposal systems, which are powered by solar energy. These efficient systems are being manufactured at the Industrial park. Dwelling in the new concept is at smart community centres, where the emphasis is on green city residence, reduction in noise and atmospheric pollution and, supporting the ecological balances rather than disturbing them. Yinchuan has established 500 smart communities, mapped out 11 convenience facilities, with the major beneficiary being the erstwhile impoverished Hui Muslim community. The net result is a quantum leap in the quality of life of the people focusing on health, education, environment and security with a proactive approach rather than a reactive outlook.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 29


International

‘Smart city’

initiatives can lead to a better environment in Macau The Alibaba Group will collaborate with the Macau government to turn Macau into a “smart city” with the use of cloud computer technologies. This is welcome news to Macau residents as it brings the hope of creating more a sustainable environment in our city.

I

www.UrbanaWorld.com

am particularly interested in the suggested use of artificial intelligence to optimise transport management, as traffic congestion has been one of Macau’s ingrained problems. Based on information from different resources, it is clear that urban mobility is important. There needs to be a reduction in car use and ownership as well as increases in cycling, and public and shared transport. I would like to see the adoption of a digital car-sharing system, which enables people to share the use of a car without having to own one. The individual members of the car-sharing community will have their complementary driving needs identified by an advanced algorithm that uses social profiling and geo-location. An app will help one locate the nearest of the vehicles parked on the city’s streets. After use, the car can simply be parked within a designated area in the city for the next user. The members can thus enjoy the freedom and benefits the car affords without shouldering the huge costs that come with single ownership.

They also play a shared role in reducing carbon emissions and traffic congestion. I am also in favour of a bicycle-sharing system. It offers an even better solution to traffic congestion, and noise and air pollution problems by providing access to bicycles as an alternative to motorised vehicles. Bikes can also connect users to public transit networks, thus solving what is often known as the “last mile” problem. What’s more, e-bikes could be a new tourist attraction, enabling visitors to travel round the city easily. As with car sharing, it would be very convenient, with smartphone mapping apps to show the locations with available bikes. However, whether Macau will become a smart city depends very much on government policies and the support of residents. I hope the measures I have outlined will be backed by the government, as they can lead to improvements in the current transport systems and so contribute to Macau having a better environment. Angela Chong, Macau

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 30


International

Auckland’s smart city priorities revealed ICT and smart city plans due by the end of 2017. New Zealand’s largest city is in the final stages of preparing a smart city master plan, which is expected to be made public by year end.

W

the agency that the Singapore government set up to push the country towards becoming a smart nation, concurs with Burton and Petrock, and adds that like other cities, Singapore also has had to grapple with the internal challenges of ageing populations and increasing urban density.

e are going to do a traditional ICT strategy and at the same time we are developing what we plan to do in the innovation space. I want to have both out by year end,” he said. Overall, Denvir said, he wanted the council to be fast follower on smart city initiatives. Auckland Council was formed in 2010 by the amalgamation of seven local councils, and Denvir said much of the focus for its IT over the past seven years had been on consolidation.

“We had seven of everything. All my resources have been focussed on consolidating everything to build a solid base. Now we are starting to look at the future: big data, IoT, etc.” Initially, he said, the responsibility for smart city initiatives had lain outside IT, with the chief strategy and planning officer.

“We now have joint governance over smart city issues and going through that process we’ve discovered what smart people in the organisation are doing: there was some IoT, some analytics with third-party engineering firms and I started to build a suite of use cases for IoT and analytics.” Denvir said one of his big challenges was to avoid the creation of silos, to make sure that data gathered from one project could be made available to others.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

“I want to make sure whatever we do is scalable, and it is important that we have a system that can handle multiple use cases. And a lot of the data that we store will be valuable to parts of the community. How do we architect that? He added: “We will provide governance to make sure data is used and managed correctly. We want to make sure we can bring in our data and others can bring in theirs.” For example, he said, the council has put in place a safe swim program under which it monitors water quality at Auckland beaches to check for pollution. “But we cannot use that data for any other use cases. So we have taken a step back: we have to be scalable. “We are also trying to monitor storm water with sensors that will go through the stormwater pipes and assess capacity. Then we could take in rain forecast information and get ahead of the curve on flood events. We could change maintenance schedules and make sure we are putting our resources where they are needed.” In another early initiative the council has been working with Hitachi Data Systems (now part of Hitachi Vantara) to implement a system for monitoring refrigera-

tors in food outlets. Denvir said 55 percent of all New Zealand’s food outlets were within the Auckland Council’s area. “Under the Food Management Act we have a compliance role to provide certification for food outlets. That includes making sure each outlet is monitoring fridge temperatures. Often that’s with pen and paper. If we are lucky, an Excel spread sheet.” The council engaged with Hitachi, which recommended putting sensors on the fridges and using data analytics. “I was impressed by how quickly they turned that around,” Denvir said. Denvir was speaking to IoT Hub on the sidelines of Hitachi’s Next 2017 customer event in Las Vegas at which Hitachi announced the formation of Vantara and a new release of its IoT platform, Lumada. He told IoT Hub, “The reason I am here now is because I like what Hitachi is doing with Lumada. It is open in the sense that it plays nicely with everybody. There are a lot of other IoT [platforms] but they are quite restrictive; you have to use their entire stack. With Lumada you can use their entire stack or replace almost any part of it with somebody else’s.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 31


International

Nvidia Picks Up Alibaba And Huawei As Partners For Smart City Platform Nvidia’s Metropolis AI smart cities platform sounds like a story arc for DC’s superman comics, but it’s actually a GPU-based intelligent monitoring tool that can enable things like easing traffic congestion, allocating city services and even finding lost individuals.

M

etropolis has picked up two new partners in Alibaba and Huawei, and Nvidia’s also announcing that it’s including its DeepStream software development kit in the generally available version of Metropolis. Metropolis uses video, and the over 1 billion connected cameras projected to be installed in cities around the world by the end of 2020 to run a variety of AI-enabled analysis applications,

www.UrbanaWorld.com

which can assist with everything from law enforcement to urban planning.Nvidia is also showing off some applications of the tech at GTC in Beijing today, including a project from China’s Hikvision Research Institute that uses a combination of Jetson, Tesla P4 and DGX-1 to achieve 90 percent recall rates for its face ID and matching techniques.There’s definitely an element of ‘Big Brother’ eerie omnipotent

surveillance to this, but it’s also likely a key step in getting things like automated or at least semi-automated city-based transportation networks in place. Alibaba is using the tech to improve the city governance service capabilities of urban planners, for instance. But Huawei and others are definitely focused on law enforcement applications, which could strike some as more of a mixed bag.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 32


International

Inside Singapore’s bid to achieve smart city status

H

owever, Lee previously remarked before the rally that progress is still slow because Singapore is still lacking an integrated national sensor network, a national digital identity system and cashless payments in hawker centres and shops, and between people.The Drum reached out to experts to ask what should Singapore do, in addition to Lee’s wishes, to truly become a smart nation, in terms of connecting things, mobility, water, city services, smart building and smart energy. Mark Burton, digital marketing manager at technology group Schneider Electric, says cities need to become smart now because they are in competition to provide the best quality of life possible to their citizens and, as 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050, the race is on to see which city

will be the best. These cities face the challenge of providing huge populations with basic resources such as clean water and safe food, he explains, whilst also ensuring overall sustainability goals are being met socially, economically and environmentally.

“These ultra-modern cities must fulfil promises of universal access to cleaner energy, sufficient fresh water and people’s ability to travel from one point to another with as much ease as possible.” Victoria Petrock, principal analyst at eMarketer defines Singapore as one of the ‘model’ cities in terms of its efforts to implement smart city initiatives and it has been aided by the fact that it is relatively small geographically, relatively affluent with a highly educated population, a good infrastructure and the government has a lot of central control over what’s going on.

“The obstacles are the same as they would be for all smart cities,” she said. “Getting the systems to work together, putting the right technology in place, ensuring that the systems are secure and stable, finding the right expertise and the right people to do the work, etc.” Victoria Petrock Principal Analyst At Emarketer Defines Singapore

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Singapore has made becoming the world’s first smart city-state one of its key objectives in the next few years, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong emphasising the goal in his annual National Day.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

“Fundamentally, being a smart nation is about Singapore taking full advantage of technology to create new jobs, new business opportunities, so as to make our economy more productive and competitive, make our lives more convenient and to make Singapore an outstanding city in which to live, work and play,” she says.

Burton praises Singapore’s attempts to merge technology into every aspect of life on the small island to improve the enjoyment and efficiency of key tasks people do on a day-to-day basis. He also highlights travel, healthcare, housing and data as some of the areas where the country has made the most progress. “Singapore is transforming its bus stops with plans to include interactive maps, wi-fi connectivity, e-books and even a swing. As there are almost four million daily rides, catching the bus is the largest part of Singapore’s transport network,” explains Burton. “In some hospitals, Singapore has also begun trialing video conferencing for patients in non-emergency cases. The KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, one of the biggest and busiest in Singapore has begun to use this form of consultation with issues such as speech therapy, lactation consultation services and paediatric home care services.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 33


International

the agency that the Singapore government set up to push the country towards becoming a smart nation, concurs with Burton and Petrock, and adds that like other cities, Singapore also has had to grapple with the internal challenges of ageing populations and increasing urban density. JACQUELINE POH chief executive at GovTech “In Europe we are likely to associate public houses with tower blocks, Singapore tells us a different story as 80% of its residents live in affordable houses maintained by the country’s Housing and Development Board. In this housing, we’re expecting to see a significant uplift in technologies such as smart thermometers, a new vacuum waste management system and efforts to use their own solar,” Burton continues, adding that the crucial organ of smart cities is data and with sensors in these apartments, the government is able to track the population’s energy consumption with much more accuracy, record their behaviours, ultimately allowing them to be more informed in the planning, design and maintenance of public housing estates. GovTech’s Poh explains that because smart nation is a national effort that involves the entire government, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG) - comprising the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office and GovTech - was formed in May 2017 under the prime minister’s office to better coordinate interagency efforts and accelerate the development of Singapore becoming a smart nation. She highlights five strategic national projects that the SNDGG is focused on, which will lay the foundation for pervasive adoption of digital and smart technologies throughout the economy and society in line with the prime minister’s wishes. The first will be developing a ‘National Digital Identity’ to enable citizens and businesses to transact digitally in a convenient and secure manner; the second will be to develop an e-payment framework to allow everyone to make safe, fast and simple payments; the third will be building the ‘Smart Nation Sensor Platform’, an

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Poh further explains that Singapore’s other strengths, like having a pool of talent that performs well in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) disciplines, a greater demand for infocomm-technology professionals and engineers and a vibrant innovation ecosystem with an expanding number of local and international startups, are helping drive results. She also added that an open data network with the private sector leveraging on government data through data.gov.sg to drive new services, is another reason why the country is in a good position to succeed in its quest to become a smart nation, in spite of the challenges highlighted by the prime minister.

integrated nationwide sensor platform to accelerate the deployment of sensors and other IoT (Internet of Things) devices that will make Singapore more liveable and secure; the fourth will be leveraging data and digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, to further enhance the public transport commute in Smart Urban Mobility; and finally ‘Moments of Life’, which bundles relevant government services, across different agencies, to the citizen at different moments of his or her life. “This reduces the need for citizens to transact with multiple government agencies, for a more seamless and convenient experience,” explains Poh.The experts also agree that while cities like New York, London and Tokyo are on track to become a smart city, there is no one size fit all approach and Singapore has to forge its own path. “Leading smart cities around the world have their own respective defining characteristics and we are definitely looking at areas that we can adapt to our Singapore context that Singapore is a citystate with a single layer of government,” says Poh. “This is larger than being a Smart City, and I think we are unique in the world as we are capable of pulling together national policy, industry, technology and people into a cohesive whole, and making things work.” However, even though the Singapore government has identified what it needs to do to push the country to become a smart nation, there is a difference in opinions between experts when asked what future challenges will hinder Singapore’s progress. Burton believes there is too much control from the government, like the formation of GovTech and SNDGG. “The

BBC spoke to Harminder Singh, a senior lecturer in business information systems at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, who says the main issue with smart nation is that there may be too much government control over it right now for real innovation to take place.” “There seems to be a need for a balance between creativity, innovation and government control, something that Singapore is still learning to master,” he continues. “Technology can always be improved, there is always more data out there to work from, and innovation and creativity is endless. Getting this balance right is taking time, so it’s hard to say when the nation can be fully crowned a smart nation.” In contrast, Poh says digital inclusivity is a challenge for Singapore as it needs to ensure that all segments of society benefit and nobody gets left behind. “Be it through the strategic national projects, or the simple digital solutions that address day-to-day needs – such as paying bills, and other digital government services – the objective is to meet the needs of users across different segments,” she explains. Whatever the future challenges are, a report by Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet Inc’s urban innovation organisation, explains that cities attempting to become smart should pay heed to Rio de Janeiro’s flawed attempt to become a smart city ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The capital of Brazil won a “World Smart City Award” from the Smart City Expo World Congress in 2013 after building a operations centre and an integrated centre of command and control ahead of the competition to improve public services in regards to safety and disaster management.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 34


International

Orange Romania completes first phase of smart-city pilot project in Alba Iulia

O

range Romania completed the first phase of the smartcity pilot project in Alba Iulia and began the analysis phase of the first data collected through the implemented products. Almost one year after signing the cooperation agreement with Alba Iulia City Hall, the installation of the equipment was finalised and the data analysis started. At present, there are over 600 sensors in Alba Iulia, which, together with the mobile, fixed and dedicated communications networks, create the digital infrastructure of the city.

Alba Iulia enjoys broadband internet access, 4G / 4G +/LTE-A, Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN provided by Orange Romania and secured through the Business Internet Security platform. This open infrastructure is based on an open data platform through which applications developed by partner start-ups connect local authorities, locals, tourists, and entrepreneurs in Alba Iulia. In this way, the digital infrastructure of the city facilitates new opportunities as well as the optimisation of local resources.

T

he operator said the infrastructure enables digital governance through a platform for connecting to Wi-Fi, the Civic Alert service which enables people to alert authorities in connection with the town’s issues, and the City Analytics service which enables local authorities to track pedestrian traffic. As part of the same project, a digital class platform was installed in 2 high schools in Alba Iulia. There’s also an e-alba iulia app for Android and iOS which offers various pieces of information about the town’s touristic objectives to those who visit the locality.

I

n addition, as part of Orange’s pilot project, 4 student teams from Alba Iulia presented smart city products at the Innovation Labs hackathon. One of them qualified for the Demo Day 2017 final in Bucharest. Also, as a result of Orange’s acceptance in the Horizon2020, Matilda and Slicenet research programmes, Alba Iulia will become the beneficiary of 5G smart-vertical technologies.

T

he infrastructure also includes sensors for monitoring air quality which were installed in 15 buses that have Wi-Fi as well as a platform for managing public lighting.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 35


Smartinfrastructure

Maha Signs Pact With South Korea For Infra Projects The Maharashtra government signed an MoU with South Korea for increased co-operation in infrastructure projects like development of smart cities, roads, airports and metros on the first day of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visit to that country.

F

adnavis embarked on a threeday tour to South Korea and Singapore.

“Had a very good meeting with Kim Hyunmee, Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) in Seoul. Informed Minister Hyunmee about Maharashtras growth story, especially how it got 50 per cent of the total FDI in India and how we lead in infrastructure projects,” the release quoted Fadnavis as saying. He said the Maharashtra government wanted to invite South Korean companies to be a part of the states development journey by investing here.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

“This MoU is to help with implementation strategy, legal systems, policies, technologies and information in infrastructure development,” a release from the Chief Ministers Office (CMO) said. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Hyunmee and her team displayed immense interest in the states Samruddhi corridor project, which envisages building a 700-km super express highway connecting Mumbai to Nagpur.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 36


Smartinfrastructure

EESL to replace nearly 50K street lights with LEDs in Gurugram The Maharashtra government signed an MoU with South Korea for increased co-operation in infrastructure projects like development of smart cities, roads, airports and metros on the first day of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visit to that country.

E

ESL shall replace over 48,568 conventional street lights with LED lights, which would lead MCG to save approximately 13 million units of electricity annually, it said. The MoU entails entire upfront capital cost of upgradation of conventional streetlight fixtures with LED streetlight fixtures will be invested by MCG while EESL will carry out the annual maintenance and warranty replacement on behalf of MCG for a period of 10 years. At present, the street light system prevailing in MCG consists of conventional lighting systems

www.UrbanaWorld.com

such as high pressure sodium vapour lamps, metal halide lamps and fluorescent tube lights. The installation of LED-based street lighting system is essential, since LED lighting offer higher efficiency, better illumination and life expectancy apart from being environmentally sustainable. The EESL will be implementing the Centralised Control and Monitoring System (CCMS) as a replacement of existing conventional streetlight fixtures besides providing minimum guarantee of savings of 45-55 percent.

S

tate-run EESL today said it has signed a pact with the Municipal Corporation Gurugram (MCG) to install LED street lights under the Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP). Gurugram will be the first city in Haryana to be implementing the SLNP project. The implementation is in line with the smart city initiative of Haryana, Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) said in a statement.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed here by MCG Superintending Engineer N D Vashishtha and EESL Chief General Manager (Technical) Venkatesh Dwivedi.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 37


Smartinfrastructure

Competition growing as smart cities gain ground City planners need to build communities for the happiness of people for the future is not about country versus country but smart cities competing with smart cities,

“When people are happy, they are more resilient and recover faster against diseases and hard times. They live longer almost 15 years and be much more productive. In the future, it’s going to be cities competing with cities not countries with countries. The cities should be a source of happiness because it’s a good for the prosperity and happiness of its residents,” says Jorge Saraiva, Smart Cities Adviser, European Union.said.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

H

e pointed out that what makes people happier is the social interaction. “That is the root cause of the happiness. If you want to design and build city for happiness, you need to focus on designing communities; a place where people connect and interact irrespective of the diversity of the people. Happier people means more trust they have on the neighbours and it speeds up the business and prosperity of every business and community,” he noted. Saraiva was addressing the audience on “Smart design: the essence of happy and efficient citizens and residents” topic at the Gitex Technology Week at the Dubai World Trade Centre on Tuesday. The mega event will run till Thursday.

“Quality of life is going down and down because in the city you wake up early in the morning, drive car for 2 hours in traffic to drop your kids to school and go to office; then again you pick your children from school and head home. People spend 4 hours driving on the roads - that is not quality of life, that is not city design. In fact, it is the city designed for cars - not for people. Future cities cannot be designed and built this way. Cities should be designed for people and this is why many existing cities are not sustainable. Cars using just 6 hours for parking lots is not what we should be doing as smart city planners,” Saraiva said while addressing the audience at the conference.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 38


Smartinfrastructure

Giving a welcome address, Philip Bane, managing director, Smart Cities Council, said smart city is all about building communities. According to United Nations, there are 7.6 billion in the world, which will increase to 8.6 billion by 2030 and 10 billion by 2050. The global population is projected to reach 11.2 billion by 2100 - just when the humanity is expected to step on the Mars. “The most dangerous part is that this population is dramatically shifting to cities. By 2050, 6.4 billion people will be living in the cities. It continues to escalate to reach 80 per cent. Those cities which don’t have sustainable model, will lose a lot of resources. This is why UN said, guys, cities are not sustainable and we need to build smart cites,” said Saraiva. “You need to design cities not only for people but need to involve people to design those cities. That is the reason why we call smart cites are smart communities in EU. We are involving people in the design

of the cities because this way they are not only giving you information what is good and bad but also thinking what should be and should not be part of their neighbours. Because citizens are the end users. “No cities are equal. When you start building cities, you need to know what is their soul or DNA. Cities will have to stand up for their own contribution to the globalised world. People in the future will be migrating between cities and that is why they want to be recognised as part of the city. People should be involved to add value to the cities. Cities are all about people; people are the engine of the future economies - not machines. Cities should promote themselves as brand,” he concluded.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Harshul Joshi, senior vice-president for cyber advisor services, DarkMatter, Said cyber security is a critical piece of smart city. “Lives of residents of smart cities will be at stake if cyber security is compromised. We simply cannot put resilience and safety at the backburner. If the cyber security of any sector or city is compromised, it can bring the city to its knees. But no one can bring a city to its knees if we have cyber security in place. Next world war will not be physical - but cyber war,” Joshi said while addressing the conference. “We are opening up cities, therefore, we have to be smart. The 5 pillars of cyber resilience is to prepare/identify, protect, detect, respond and recover. If one entity comes under attack, the whole city can come to its knees,” he said while addressing the audience at Gitex Technology Week.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 39


SmartCities

Tamil Nadu: Smart city projects get green signal Integrated parking mgmt, high-tech surveillance camera and cycle-sharing schemes to step up security and clear congestion.

Corporation Commissioner D. Karthikeyan Told Deccan Chronicle. After Several Studies And Revisions The Smart City Proposals Have Cleared The First Stage And Now The Proposals Will Turn Into The Projects As Per The Guidelines Issued By The Union Ministry Of Urban Development, The Official Said.

T

he board of directors of the Chennai Smart City and the top brass of Chennai corporation on Tuesday gave their approval to several civic and infrastructure projects mooted under the prestigious smart city project.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

“Several dream projects in Chennai like integrated parking management, high tech surveillance camera scheme and the cycle sharing scheme have been cleared by the board and the proposal will now reach the state high power committee comprising finance and municipal administration departments�, All the projects cleared on Tuesday will ease congestion and enhanced security in Chennai. The long-pending cycle sharing project will also benefit the cycle lovers and reduce congestion. High-tech monitoring using online systems and real-time traffic and parking management will be executed in

coordination with the city traffic police, the commissioner added. According to Raj Cherubal, chief executive officer, Chennai Smart City Limited, the board has cleared a bunch of projects and all these projects will give smart solutions in congested areas like T Nagar, Vadapalani and Broadway. Identification of experts and planning had also commenced, he said. According to city corporation sources several ideas and recommendations from members of the public had also reached the civic body and of one of the prominent suggestion is the development of IT corridor under the smart city project. Residents of north Chennai had also demanded improvement in drains and widening of roads in areas like Royapuram, Perambur and R K Nagar.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 40


SmartCities

Smart city project aims at turn-ing Puducherry into global tourism spot: Narayanasamy

S

According to a PTI report, the Smart City project being implemented in Puducherry with the French government aims at transforming the city into a global tourism destination by leveraging its heritage, cultural, spiritual and educational advantages, said V Narayanasamy, Chief Minister, Puducherry.

peaking after inaugurating a one-day conference on ‘Implementation of Puducherry Smart City Project’ organised by Puducherry Smart City Development Ltd, which is executing it, he said France had been consistently supporting the Union Territory in various developmental projects. French Consul General in Puducherry Catherine Suard, Minister Counsellor and Head of the Regional Economic Department for South Asia (French Embassy) Jean Marc Fenet and Ministers of Puducherry were among those present. An MoU for beach restoration project was inked between PSCDL and National Institute of Ocean Technology on the occasion.

France-based Development Agency (Agence Francais pour Development) had signed an agreement with the Puducherry government in January 2016 to provide technical support in sustainable urban development through this project.

BSNL protest over Madhya Pradesh’s smart cities tender Complains to Centre and state that its joint bid with Hitachi and Fluent Grid is being unfairly downgraded in favour of HPE

www.UrbanaWorld.com

G

overnment-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) wants revaluation of its technical bid for the Madhya Pradesh government’s ‘smart city’ project, for a tender to build command and control centres, as well as integrated data and disaster recovery centres, in seven cities. At present, the award is reportedly likely to go to US-based HP Enterprises (HPE). In a letter a few days earlier to the chief executive of Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Ltd (which issued the tender on behalf of all the cities),

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 41


Casestudy

MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF GREATER MUMBAI RE PLATFORMS EXISTING ARCGIS SOLUTION TO IMPROVE CITIZEN SERVICES PROJECT SUMMARY

M

CGM is one of the largest local governments in the Asian continent. From the time of its establishment in 1882 as India’s first municipal corporation, numerous non-political groups, NGOs and organizations of citizens have worked closely with the body providing several benefits to Indian citizens.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

CHALLENGES

T

he Development Plan Department was receiving many RTIs and letters of complaint regarding the huge delays in service delivery to citizens. The new state government’s regulation for delivering services to the public within seven days was placing an additional pressure on the Department to deploy

A

simplified enterprise web GIS application that could meet its need for DP Remarks Generation with minimum manual intervention. MCGM required a system that could do without skilled manpower to deliver the service.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 42


Casestudy

SOLUTION

E

sri India implemented an ArcGIS Server based enterprise web GIS solution for DP departmental users in an intranet environment. The system could be operated by non-technical staff and since the work was distributed and automated, manual intervention was kept to a minimum. The key features of the solution included challan generation, DP Remarks Report Generation and management of fees.

The web-based GIS application now helps MCGM users to view, query and generate map and map-based reports. GIS enabled web-based apps is being deployed by 16 departments including Solid Waste Management, Development Planning, Roads and Traffic, Sewage, Water, Property Tax, Vigilance, Disaster Management Planning, Tree Authority, Healthcare, among others.

BENEFITS CUSTOMER SPEAK The offered system has helped us to deliver the desired services to the citizen well within 7 days specified by the State Government with the help of departmental staff without knowing GIS technology. This has also helped us to achieve considerable time reduction for service delivery to citizen in line of the Hon. Prime Minister’s vision of making systems user friendly under “Ease of Doing Business”. Mr. Sanjay Nirmal (Assistant Engineer (DP) R North Ward)

www.UrbanaWorld.com

The new re-platformed system, based on cutting-edge Esri technology distributed work—that was earlier dependent on one person—to different non-GIS user experts. The Development Plan Department of MCGM is now able to: • Generate the challans through the clerk, addressing the needs of users on the same day, as opposed to 2-3 months, as was the case earlier • Have the clerk manage all form fees and DP Remarks fees, which have been centralized to monitor the revenue • Vastly improve the productivity of the Department’s staff • Have the sub-engineer generate and download both Map and Document reports within 2-3 minutes, which earlier took months. The sub-engineer can focus on other work than issuing DP Remarks • Generate user-based reports to track their performance based on period selection • Allow users, based on their allocation to access the centralized enterprise MCGM data • Make GIS data management, editing and handling more efficient • Serve citizens well while conforming to the government’s stipulated service delivery criteria

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 43


Casestudy

Athens International Airport trusts EXM and Libelium’s IoT platform to enhance environmental monitoring

Map of Athens

AIA’s commitment to environmental protection goes hand in hand with innovation. That’s why in 2016, the airport partnered with a Greek company specialized in IoT prediction analytics and IoT solutions, Ex Machina in order to explore innovative IoT solutions to enrich AIA’s environmental monitoring, analysis and reporting. Libelium’s technology was utilized for the hardware sensors part of this project. Eight Waspmote Plug & Sense! Smart Cities, three Waspmote Plug & Sense! Environment PRO using GPRS and LoRa communications together with Meshlium IoT gateways using LoRa and 3G communications compose the in field hardware of the solution.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Athens International Airport (AIA), in Greece, has increased the number of passengers by more than 10% in the last year. Approximately 20 million passengers went through its gates in 2016 setting a new traffic record for Athens. These figures involve a significant number of planes landing and taking off. The airport has a strong commitment to environmental protection; it is the first airport in Greece to become carbon neutral.

Diagram of Athens International Airport IoT solution

The aim of this project was to face two demanding challenges: The need to monitor air quality outside the airport fence. The need to determine aircraft location on the airfield.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 44


Casestudy

AD-HOC AIR QUALITY MONITORING

T

he first challenge involved the monitoring and analysis of air pollutant concentrations, such as Ozone (O3) and Particulate Matter (PM1, PM2.5, PM10). Ex Machina focused on the need for an inexpensive, highly portable, stand-alone, connected air pollution monitoring device to complement AIA’s existing air quality monitoring network. The solution is based on Libelium Waspmote Plug & Sense! Sensor Platform, and is comprised of costeffective, standard hardware assembly with EXM’s custom firmware. Each sensor node is equipped with probes for temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, ozone and particulate matter. Aditionally, throughout the project it was possible to evaluate Libelium’s air quality sensors accuracy, taking advantage of the highly portable/compact and energy autonomous approach of the Waspmote Plug & Sense! model. Finally the LoRa communication characteristics, in terms of range, security and energy consumption were also evaluated.

Air quality monitoring solution based on Waspmote Plug & Sense! and Meshlium Gateways

AIRCRAFT LOCATION ON THE AIRFIELD

T

he second challenge was to detect aircraft location in the airfield during take off with a non-intrusive mechanism. To address this challenge, Ex Machina decided to utilize acoustic localization techniques. This unusual, yet innovative approach is possibly world’s first implementation in using noise sensors to determine aircraft location on the airfield.

Noise sensors based on Libelium’s Waspmote Plug & Sense! Smart cities

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 45


Casestudy

Environmental monitoring dashboards of Ex Machina IoT Platform

E

x Machina deployed an array of sound/noise metering nodes of Libelium Plug & Sense! to monitor noise levels on the airfield in real time, thus creating a non-intrusive IoT solution which achieves airplane acoustic localization based on real-time data analytics of the data produced by the noise sensors.

A

nother aspect of the project was the challenges related with the location that the sensors had to be placed, involving multiple restrictions for safety and security reasons. As a result, the sound monitoring nodes were autonomous, bearing solar panels and batteries and utilized dual wireless communications (GPRS, LoRa).

T

he noise data collected is analysed in the EXM IoT backend, in order to be correlated with various additional information, such as airplane types/flights/airlines. Through the combined analysis of the acquired data, the location of aircraft can be identified and reported to the airport’s environmental department for further tatistical analysis, thus enhancing its environmental monitoring capabilities.

T

he EXM turn-key ΙοΤ PaaS combines powerful analytics, visualization and reporting on the data processing cloud side, with on-site sensor deployment and communication infrastructure for real-world data acquisition and aggregation. The LoRa communications infrastructure additionally enables the use of diverse low-power wireless sensors and IoT use-cases within the airport site, such as water or gas consumption monitoring, indoor climate/air quality tracking, parking space management, and so on.

E

x Machina specializes in environmental IoT predictive analytics offering a wide range of solutions built on top of cutting edge open source IoT technologies and IoT PaaS cloud providers. In the current project, various IoT PaaS options were integrated with Meshlium and were evaluated, such as Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix and Sentilo.io which all provided a good fit for the project requirements. Final olution was a mix of Microsoft Azure services combined ogether with EXM’s components built on other open source IoT frameworks/systems including NodeRED, Grafana and InfluxDB. This approach provided the maximum flexibility and extensibility as it was required.

L

ibelium’s Waspmote Plug & Sense! devices send the sensor data using LoRa communications for low power, low range, real time sensor data transmission and device control/orchestration. For secure device management, Over the Air firmware upgrades (FOTA), configuration of firmware parameters and thresholds and the bulk upload of sensor data as backup, the sensor platform uses GPRS communications. Ex Machina’s decision to trust Libelium’s opensource technologies provides maximum flexibility to its end customers avoiding vendor lock-in, being protocol agnostic and at the same time secure, robust and scalable solutions. The use of open technologies to build the solution increases flexibility and transparency, enabling at the same time full access to raw data.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Takeoffs at Athens International Airport

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 46


Casestudy

HIGH TECH, FLEXIBLE AND ACCURATE PLATFORM

M

anolis Nikiforakis, CEO of Ex Machina, has a long experience in the field of the IoT. He is the leader of this project, in which an IoT wireless sensor network of thirteen devices made by Libelium has been deployed. Manolis explains the reasons for the choice of Libelium’s as a partner for this project: “fast time to market with minimum hardware related overhead was an important requirement.” , he states. “As this is a pilot project and our focus is on the IoT backend software analytics, we also required flexibility in order to assemble sensor hardware exactly as needed”, Manolis adds. “But

www.UrbanaWorld.com

equally important is the technical support and Libelium combines both features perfectly”, Manolis states. Airport personnel from the IT and Environmental departments who were involved in the project were satisfied by the project results, both in terms of characteristics of the used technology but also on the analytics results and statistics. Further to this successful pilot, the airport is examining possible use cases with Ex Machina. Overall, Ex Machina considers the Airport as a smart city as it evolves towards Airport 3.0 thus the deployed IoT/LoRa infraestructure will be extended and reused in various other IoT use-cases.

“Libelium provides a very well thought solution addressing the sensor hardware and communication layers of the IoT value chain, making it a perfect fit for R&D projects. In Ex Machina we strongly believe that IoT transformation projects demand an agile approach and Libelium is an excellent first step in this process”, Manolis points out.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 47


Casestudy

Libelium Continues Betting On Education With The Second Edition Of The Iot Spartans Challenge The educational program is opened to technical schools and students to cover the gap between skills demanded by IoT companies and practical knowledge of workforce. IoT Spartans Ambassador: Technology engineering and electronics students can nominate their professor and teachers to participate in the program.

L

ibelium announces the 2nd edition of the IoT Spartans Challenge to enhance worldwide education among students and universities promoting electronics skills. Education is one of the company strategic pillars and Libelium is reinforcing its commitment to cover the gap between the skills demanded by IoT companies and practical knowledge of workforce. In the upcoming years, there will be around 4.5 million of employment opportunities for IoT developers. The registration calendar is already opened for individual participants and universities and the course will start. The educational program offers teaching materials, webinars, online quiz and tests for students to prepare them for the IoT world. Universities can also get the recognition as top educational centres in IoT training. Libelium will give prizes for the top three developers and the highest-ranking educational institution. For this year edition, the IoT Spartans Challenge ooffers three different promotion programs.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

IoT Spartans Sponsor: Universities and schools interested in participating in the contest can search a public or private organization to sponsor them to access to the challenge. IoT Spartans Collaborator: Any Cloud partner from Libelium Ecosystem can join the program by providing a webinar about the platform and giving a prize related to the business core of its company.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 48


Casestudy

IoT Spartans Summer School

F

or 2nd edition of The IoT Spartans Challenge we have launched a Summer School to warm-up for the educational program with some introductory chapers. The course will be opened between the 15th of June and the 15th of July to provide training material for students during their holidays.

2016 Educational programs summary The first edition of IoT Spartans Challenge showed some realities of technological education sector: there is a lack of specific training about IoT. Only a ten per cent of 1,200 students were able to finish the first edition of The IoT Spartans Challenge. “The students are not enough prepared to follow the practical lessons”, stated Alicia Asín, Libelium CEO, in an article published last year. In 2016 edition, twelve universities engaged actively the challenge and Microsoft was our gold sponsor providing access for the best eleven developers to Azure Cloud platform.

2016 Educational programs summary The first edition of IoT Spartans Challenge showed some realities of technological education sector: there is a lack of specific training about IoT. Only a ten per cent of 1,200 students were able to finish the first edition of The IoT Spartans Challenge. “The students are not enough prepared to follow the practical lessons”, stated Alicia Asín, Libelium CEO, in an article published last year. In 2016 edition, twelve universities engaged actively the challenge and Microsoft was our gold sponsor providing access for the best eleven developers to Azure Cloud platform. Iot Spartans Challenge Champions Ist Edition - 2016

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 49


Casestudy

Libelium’s IoT platform helps to control environmental imp act on Palma de Mallorca’s harbor to become a smart tourist destination Cruises have undergone an exponential growth in the last few years. More and more tourists choose to spend their holidays on board of one of those cruisers increasing the maritime traffic arriving at harbor. Among their favorite destinations there is the Mediterranean Sea, where Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca’s harbors lead the ranking of passengers welcoming. In the case of Palma de Mallorca, massive arrival of ships and tourists endangers the island’s environmental balance. Authorities are trying to prevent its impact from having a negative effect on life conditions in Mallorca, which is betting on becoming a smart and sustainable tourist destination.

Map of Athens

BECOMING SMART DESTINATIONS

T

o do so, Mallorcawifi.com has opted for Libelium’s technology in the project developed for the Balearic Harbors Authority (APB in Spanish). In this way, Mallorcawifi. com has deployed a wireless sensor platform aimed at measuring environmental impact not only of cruisers docking, but also of the whole harbor’s activity. In fact, Mallorcawifi.com has more than 20 years of experience in telecommunications services and WiFi nets deployment. This company built the largest public free WiFi net in Europe following a successful public-private cooperation

www.UrbanaWorld.com

model. Their aim is to turn touristic destination into smart cities supporting an innovative a sustainable business model. A multidisciplinary research team from University of the Balearic Islands (UIB in Spanish) is also involved in the project. This team will analyze the results obtained by the sensors net in order to correlate air pollution and noise pollution levels with the activity generated in the harbor, and the way it affects the city. Everything is aimed at making decisions on the harbor’s environmental behavior and improving the conditions so that tourists and island inhabitants can enjoy a healthier city.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 50


Casestudy

Waspmote Plug & Sense! Sensor Platforms installed in Mallorca

Balearic harbors managed by APB are ranked in the third place in the number of cruise passengers -almost two millionand are the second in the number of regitered layovers, led by Italian Civitavecchia harbor.

H

owever, not only cruisers dock in Palma de Mallorca’s harbor. In 2016, according to APB 3,031 ships arrived at any of the Balearic harbors. Those ships brought 2.5 million passengers and more than 8.2 million tons of good. According to a study by the Balearic Business Associations Confederation (CAEB in Spanish) and the International University of the Balearic Islands, the economic impact of Balearic harbors is 290 million euros directly on the touristic sector companies and 146 million euros of indirect economic impact. The sector creates 3,000 new employments every year.

AIR POLLUTION AND NOISE MEASUREMENT

T

he return of investment of an IoT project to improve sustainability is really easy to reach because any measure taken to increase tourists’ wellness has a positive effect on destination’s relevance and attracts higher economic power passengers. As a matter of fact, these passengers search for experiences which enable them to mix urban tourism, nature, gastronomy and interaction with the area inhabitants.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 51


Casestudy

T

he project deployed in the city of Palma measures two basic environmental parameters which most affect on citizens’ health: air quality and noise. To do so, the project contemplates to place a total of 27 Waspmote Plug & Sense! Smart Environment PRO in different locations around Palma’s harbor, and 5 Waspmote Plug & Sense! Smart Cities. Those devices collect the data provided by 81 sensors measuring, among other aspects, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, noise, emperature, humidity, air pressure, wind and rainfalls. In the first stage of the project eight devices have been placed in the Dique del Oeste, the signals tower and Portopí lighthouse, Maritime Station nr. 3, Can Barbarà, Sa Qarentena park, Mollet opposite pier, commercial piers, and the APB historical venue, next to Palma de Mallorca’s cathedral. APB intends to spread this experience to the rest of Balearic harbors.

iQmenic platform where the information is visualized Port

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Several Waspmote Plug & Sense! deployed in Mallorca’s Port

S

igfox is the protocol which has been used to communicate the data collected by the sensors. Iqmenic, created by Nexmachina, is the wireless platform for management and control of communications among sensors and IP devices to deploy new IoT services.

“The wide range of high accuracy sensors, fulfilling all our needs, as well as the ease of their deployment make Libelium’s sensors the perfect solution to this project”, states Mauricio Socias, Mallorcawifi.com’s CEO, who is “completely satisfied” with the work done by Libelium’s staff.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 52


Casestudy

Trilliant and Saigon Hi Tech Park Sign Deal for First Smart City Project in Southeast Asia Trilliant, a global provider of IoT and smart energy communications solutions, signed a Saigon Hi-Tech Park (SHTP) to deploy Southeast Asia’s first smart city project.

T

rilliant will install light-emitting diode (LED) lights, together with controls and a smart city management platform. The smart lighting system will communicate over the existing AMI network owned by the electric utility EVN Ho Chi Minh City, demonstrating the network’s capability to host multiple smart city applications. With the addition of the smart street lights on the AMI network, the platform will be able to deliver a range of innovative smart solutions, providing SHTP with increased efficiency, additional revenue, improved sustainability, greater safety for residents and a draw for new residents and businesses. According to Navigant Research, sensors and other technologies are being added to smart street lighting networks, offering a multitude of new city services, including public safety applications, air quality monitoring, EV charging, traffic management and smart parking.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

“The deployment of SHTP’s smart street lighting network allows the platform to host numerous other smart city applications, resulting in increased energy and maintenance savings,” said Bryan Spear, Trilliant managing director Asia Pacific. The street lighting deal marks the region’s first smart city project and was signed at an event attended by Dr. Le Hoai Quoc, President, People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon Hi-Tech Park and Douglas Jacobson, Principal Commercial Officer, United States Commercial Service. The deal is another milestone in Trilliant’s achievements as the leading smart communications provider in Southeast Asia. It comes only five months after Trilliant and EVN completed the successful pilot of the nation’s first AMI smart communications network at SHTP, a foundational step in EVN’s commitment to advancing the efficiency, reliability and affordability of energy for their customers.

“Trilliant looks forward to continuing our support of Vietnam’s smart city strategy,” said Andy White, president and CEO of Trilliant. “We aim for this deployment to serve as a template for the government’s future deployments.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 53


SmartIT

THE CHALLENGE IN MAKING 5G WORK FOR SMART CITIES Feature: Financial factors, commercial models, geography and planning regulations can all pose problems for local authorities with an eye on the technology

I

t may be a promise for the 2020s rather than here and now, but 5G and its implications for the development of smart places is moving up the agenda for all those involved. The new wireless broadband technology promises to run many times faster than the existing 4G, with the scope for bandwidths touching 1Gbps for some applications and the ability to handle the exponential growth in connections that comes with the internet of things (IoT). Authorities are already welcoming the potential of 5G networks, but they are going to have to change some of their own approaches to planning and infrastructure development to ensure it is fulfilled. The issue came under discussion at Smart Summit 2017 event in London, in a session that highlighted some of the serious challenges involved in harnessing the technology.

Mr. Mark Say Managing Editor

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Aberdeen driver The big driver for its adoption was made clear by Gordon Wright, future city lead at Aberdeen City Council, one of the 5G pioneer authorities in local government. “We see the emergence of 5G as something that starts to create a unified, connected city with a number of network capabilities beneath it,” he said. “It’s about the opportunity 5G will bring to disrupt the market, from where you’re locking the capacity within your own network to something in which you can push capabilities across a number of networks.” Julian David, chief executive officer of IT industry association techUK, highlighted the increased capacity and reduced latency compared with existing networks, crucial factors in the use of connected vehicles and harnessing the IoT for rapid responses. Equally important is the long term flexibility in making it possible to create different types of connectivity with multiple users. This should break through the current limitations of blocks of spectrum and help to meet an unprecedented

expansion of requirements. All this is feeding the hopes for 5G, but it is going to require a massive investment in the infrastructure and the speakers made clear there are some serious challenges.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 54


SmartIT

Small cell volume

Cost of billions

O

T

W

D

R

T

ne of these is around the lead option for providing 5G in cities, the provision of small cell miniature base stations as the basis for a network. These can operate on low power but also have a limited range – in the low hundreds of metres – and David pointed out that it is going to need a lot of them to provide universal coverage. The estimates for London alone are for a number approaching 200,000, pointing towards a major programme with the potential to hit logistical difficulties and raise protests along the way.

H

e pointed to the need for a more sympathetic approach to planning applications for 5G stations, which needs a lot of authorities to speed up the process, and to worry less about objections to the use of street furniture to provide the infrastructure.Authorities also need to create a welcoming climate for operators. He suggested they could be more sympathetic when operators have to park their vans in restricted areas to carry out maintenance – matching a privilege already enjoyed by Royal Mail – and keep the business rates to reasonable levels.

A

nother issue is the heavy volume of data moving through 5G will knock on to the fixed line broadband networks to which it is connected, pointing to a need for more fibre, and this could place a strain on the ducting infrastructure, especially around older cities. Then comes the pressure to ensure that 5G does not reinforce social exclusion by making sure it is available in all parts of a town or city, including those lower down the socio-economic scale that are often unattractive to commercial investment. Along with this is the familiar issue of how to provide any communications infrastructure over sparsely populated rural areas, especially those with hilly terrain.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

he costs for dealing with all this are going to be in billions, and while nobody seriously expects local authorities to pay the bill, they have to create the environment in which commercial operators are ready to do so. This comes down partly to shaping a mutually beneficial deal for both sides, which provides scope for multiple operators to build their own connections and services.

avid said there is a need “to think of digital infrastructure in different way, about investment environment as well as the consumer. It’s very well to sell this to highest bidder, but not the way to get fast implementation.” esponsibility for the solutions is spread between central and local government. The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport won praise for its development of a national strategy for 5G, and its financial support for a test network. But there was also some criticism of the Government’s limited ambitions for high speed broadband availability, which reduces the urgency of one of the demands for 5G.

Commercial platform right that Aberdeen has used a relationship with one to provide a commercial model to deal with the challenges around planning, regulations and access to buildings, and to develop a commercial platform on which other operators can add their contributions.

The challenge is find the alliance and commons model,” he said. “We want investment across the city, with efficient and effective economies at scale.” here are plenty of complexities in all this, but also a sense of urgency to overcome the barriers. David summed up the main priority with a simple message: “We’ve got speed up. We can’t take forever to do this stuff.”

L

ocal government needs to build the right partnerships. Richard Marijs, technology strategist for mobile communications company T-Mobile, highlighted an approach in which an authority engages one company to renew all the infrastructure in an area – lampposts, fibre ducts, even sewers – and provide the scope for others to install the more specific technologies.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 55


Finance

Amaravati Smart City Corpn to serve as SPV for greenfield project development The Andhra Pradesh Government is set to form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) Amaravati Smart City Corporation Limited for the implementation of the smart city project.

C

omes in the backdrop of the Union Ministry of Urban Development selecting Amaravati city project under the Smart City initiative of the Government. Ajay Jain, Principal Secretary, AP Government, in an order mentioned the authorised share capital of SPV for incorporation will be Rs. 20 crore initially and this will be increased later on as and when required. The paid up capital of the SPV will be Rs. 5 lakh divided into 50,000 equity shares of Rs. 10 each. This will be increased later

when required. The Governor of AP will hold 24,996 shares and Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA) 24,997 shares along with others. The SPV will be promoted by the Andhra Pradesh Government and APCRDA (instead of urban local body), with a shareholding of 50:50 and be governed by a board of directors. Its mandate is to take up the project and ensure timely completion. The APCRDA at its 9th Authority meeting recommended to make the Greenfield Amaravati on the banks of river Krishna smart and submitted the proposal in accordance with the smart city guidelines.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs after approval of the proposed move, nominated Ramesh Chand, Director (IFD), HUPA, as Director on the Board of Special Purpose Vehicle for smart city of Amaravati.The SPV corporation will be chaired by State Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration and Urban Development with 10 other members, including Ramesh Chand. The Commissioner of APCRDA shall submit a Memorandum of Association and the Articles of Association of the SPV prepared as per the guidelines of the Union Ministry for Urban development.The designs for the development of the core capital region are at advanced stage of finalisation and works are expected to begin soon.

Conman dupes trader with Smart City project “offer”

T

he man who was booked for claiming to be agent of a cabinet minister and duping a business man from Panchkula (Haryana), had promised the victim Rs 14.50 crore project out of Rs 900 crore budget under Smart City Project of the state, for which the accused had demanded Rs 25 lakh. A copy of the FIR registered at a local police station here in this case has been accessed by TOI. The minister has denied knowing the accused in this case. BJP leader Sanjay Sharma had held a press conference claiming that the contract

www.UrbanaWorld.com

under Smart City Project was promised to the businessman. He was receiving threats through messages and calls now. “The minister has said that he doesn’t know Kamal Attri (the accused) but he said he knows of Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma and has said that he was ready to go jail,” Ashish Walia who allegedly owns a glass trading company, in his complaint has alleged that he first met Kamal Attri (the accused in FIR) in 2015 through his friend who was a bouncer in Kharar area of Punjab. Later they both met in the beginning of 2016 when Attri has assured Walia that he knows many ministers of Himachal government. The minister has however denied

any connections to the case and has said that he asked the businessman to register a police complaint after he came to know about this matter. Police has registered an FIR under sections 420,467,468 and 471 of IPC. Sanjay Sharma, a BJP leader and spokesperson of HPCA (Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association) said: “I am receiving threat calls and messages since I held a press conference to expose this case. Attri (accused) in his communication has said that he has used the name of cabinet minister Sudhir Sharma so the minister has registered an FIR against him,” said Sanjay adding that he would consult his lawyers and file a police complaint about this.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 56


Finance

388 cr Sanctioned For Kakinada Smart City: Sujayarun

$15-b Investments In Smart Cities

T

he Government’s 100 smart cities mission seeks to invest over $15 billion in the next few years to build efficient and effective city management solutions and infrastructure. At the two-day India Advantage Summit, MV Rajeev Gowda, Member of Parliament, told a gathering that in moving towards the reality of smart cities, the right choice would be to create and build the urban cityscape and framework ‘with global best practices at the core and local realities and challenges addressed with a holistic approach’

www.UrbanaWorld.com

S

mart City Mission Chief Executive Officer SujayArun said under the Smart Cities Mission, the Union government has sanctioned Rs 388 crore for Kakinada for various works inthe first phase. City MLA VanamadiVenkateswara Rao chaired the meeting along with Mayor Pavani and Commissioner Aleem Basha.

Speaking on the occasion, Sujay told that Rs 6 crore have been spent for the establishment of an office and other works. He said the remaining amount would be He said all the 14 government schools in the city would be digitalised and Vivekananda Park and Gandhi Nagar parks would be beautified. E-Rickshaws, solar power panels would be established on all the government buildings

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 57


SmartGovernance

Consulting Firm For Smart City Asked To Pace Up Work Mr. Jaskiran Singh Mr. Pradeep Agarawal MC Commissioner

Deputy Commissioner

I

rked over the slow progress in the projects related to developing Ludhiana as smart city, the senior representatives of AECOM, the consultation firm have been asked to improve the pace

T

he district administration is already planning to introduce English medium in a government school at block level and the project report would be handi for modernising such schools. The chief executive officer of Ludhiana Smart City Limited (LSCL) cum MC Commissioner Jaskiran Singh revealed that the performance of consultant company AECOM was not up to the mark and that’s why they were asked to improve the pace of work. “They have been asked to prepare certain new projects like e classes for government schools, solution

of work. Senior officials of Ludhiana Smart City Limited (LSCL) have also asked the AECOM representatives to prepare a project report as to how smart classes and e learning can be introduced in the government schools. the vice president of AECOM Scott Dunn who has come from Singapore, had a meeting with MC Commissioner Jaskiran Singh and deputy commissioner Pradeep Agarawal at the Municipal Corporation office. for traffic in old city areas and development of parks,” he said. Meanwhile the officials also took the AECOM representatives who had come from Vishakhapatnam to areas like Clock tower, Ghumar Mandi and Sarabha Nagar for field visit. Notably, in an agreement signed between LSCL and AECOM on August 5, 2016, it was decided that the firm would prepare the project reports as well as consult the stakeholders in various markets where projects have to be taken up. The Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Corporation (PMIDC) had conducted the bidding process and finalization of AECOM as consultant for smart city mission was also done at state level.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

India’s Smart Cities To Get Digital ‘Brain Centres’

T

Upcoming ‘Smart Cities’ shall now go to a new level of monitoring and delivery of civic services through digitally integrated central vommand and control centres, India’s union housing and urban affairs secretary Durga Shanker Mishra said

hese centres would serve as the ‘brain centres’ of the Smart Cities for ensuring effective coordination in the functioning of various agencies of urban local bodies, thereby resulting in improved services delivery to the citizens. He said these centres, based on a host sensor connected to a central server, would function as the eyes and ears of the cities by monitoring garbage collection and its transportation, filling and emptying of garbage bins, traffic violations and noise pollution.

Samir Sharma, National Mission director, Smart City Mission, said such centres were under implementation in Pune, Nagpur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Jaipur, Raipur, Naya Raipur, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam and Kakinada. The centres have already become partly operational in Pune and Nagpur while bidding processes for 23 other cities has been completed for setting up such centres. Both officials were addressing a day-long ‘Learning and Experience Workshop on Digitally Integrated Command and Control Centres under Smart City Mission’. Mishra urged the cities concerned to set up these centres at the earliest to enable citizens to derive their benefits.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 58


SmartGovernance

Smart City Contracts To Show Results By June 2018 Only 6.3% of all projects sanctioned under the Smart Cities Mission were under implementation till July

T

Contracts already awarded for smart cities will bear visible results by June 2018, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday. Speaking at the 33rd India Economic Summit, being jointly organised by the World Economic Forum and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Puri said, “Hundreds of thousands of crores worth of contracts have already been awarded and work is in full swing”.

he minister’s comments attain significance since only 6.3 per cent of all projects sanctioned under the Smart Cities Mission were under implementation till July. Of the 2,895 projects worth Rs 1.3 lakh crore, only 181 projects valued at Rs 6,413 crore were under active implementation back then, data assessed by Business Standard had revealed.

With an eye on promoting sustainable and inclusive cities with good core infrastructure and sustainable development policies, the government had in June 2015 announced the Smart Cities Mission. So far, as part of the plan to develop a total of 100 such cities, 90 have been shortlisted in the first three rounds of the mission. This includes cities that currently have Tier-II status but are expected to become metropolises within the next five years such as Kochi, Raipur, Bhubaneswar and Amritsar.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Puri said the remaining 10 cities would be chosen shortly. The government has already cleared around Rs 48,000 crore for the Smart City initiative and Rs 50,000 crore for the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation. Earlier, reports had suggested that senior urban development ministry officials had asked state governments to stick to the deadline and commence work by November 2017. Puri, however, said the government was working actively with all stakeholders to finish the mission on time and is also committed to construct houses for all citizens by 2022, another plan by the government that has received flak for slow implementation. On the Smart Cities Mission, the central government pays the qualified cities Rs 100 crore every year and the state government contributes another Rs 100 crore. The rest of the cost is collected through government bonds or the private-public-partnership method.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 59


Smartenergy

UP Govt Plans Partnership With Finland for Smart City, Solar Power Projects The delegation, led by Finland’s minister for environment and energy Kimmo Tiilikainen, discussed a wide range of development projects related to renewable energy, bio-fuel, electric vehicles, smart grid and smart cities.

U

ttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath met with a delegation from Finland on Tuesday as the government hopes to build a partnership to work on smart city and solar energy projects in the state. The delegation, led by Finland’s minister for environment and energy Kimmo Tiilikainen, discussed a wide range of development projects related to renewable energy, bio-fuel, electric vehicles, smart grid and smart cities.

Twenty three Finnish companies also made a presentation on the projects. UP’s energy minister Shrikant Sharma and industrial development minister Satish Mahana were also present.

UP’s energy minister Shrikant Sharma Sharma said that bio-fuel, electric vehicles and eco-friendly smart cities were the focal points of the seminar.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Tiilikainen said that Finland’s technology can be used for energy saving projects and can also be utilised for traffic management. “We are working on long term energy goals by using Finnish technology. We want people to use bio-mass products,” he said.

UP’s minister of industry, Satish Mahana, said that the partnership said he hoped the proposals presented on Tuesday can soon turn into reality with the help of a long-term relationship. “In the past 6 months many companies have set up industrial units in UP. Earlier, people used to avoid UP but now they want to explore the state’s potential. With this partnership there can be the exchange of knowledge and latest technology can be used properly,” he said.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 60


Smartenergy

Roof Power Expands Electrification Of Railways The majority of the power producer’s portfolio is contracted with government of India backed entities

“We are pleased to expand our Azure Roof Power platform with Indian Railways,” said Inderpreet Wadhwa, founder, chairman and chief executive officer, Azure Power. “With this win, we have once again demonstrated our strong project development capabilities and are delighted to make this contribution towards realisation of our honourable prime minister’s commitment towards clean and green energy, through solar power generation.”

www.UrbanaWorld.com

S

tate-run Indian Railways has placed an order with Azure Power for an additional 20 MWs of solar rooftop projects.Azure Roof Power will be used to provide power for 25 years to various Indian Railway facilities across 17 states and union territories. The new allocation of 20 MWs makes the Indian solar independent power producer the largest supplier of solar power to Indian Railways with a cumulative awarded capacity of over 66 MWs which includes the 46 MWs of capacity won earlier this year. The power will be sold at a tariff range of Indian Rupee (INR) 3.64-4.49 based on location. In addition, Azure Power qualifies for a capital incentive from Indian Railways which is expected to result in a weighted average levelised tariff of INR 4.88 per kWh. Azure Roof Power offers rooftop solar power solutions for commercial, industrial, government, and institutional customers in cities across India. With more than 150MWs of operating and committed solar assets across 20 states, Azure Roof Power claims to have one of the largest rooftop portfolios in the country. The majority of the power producer’s portfolio is contracted with government of India backed entities. Azure Power solar power solutions to customers throughout India. It has developed, constructed and operated solar projects of varying sizes, from utility scale to rooftop, since its inception in 2008. Highlights include the construction of India’s first private utility scale solar PV power plant in 2009 and the implementation of the first MW scale rooftop project under the smart city initiative in 2013.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 61


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS

‘Command and control centres in smart cities will help check traffic violations’ Setting up of command and control centre (CCC) under the Smart City project will help monitor traffic movement and check violations of red light through censors

The CCC would also monitor noise pollution, check garbage collection and transportation, and filling and emptying of garbage collection bins, according to an official release quoting housing and urban affairs ministry secretary Durga Shanker Mishra.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

S

mart cities in the making are set to rise to an entirely a new level of monitoring and delivery of civic services through digitally-integrated Central Command and Control Centres,” this after inaugurating a day-long ‘Learning and Experience Sharing Workshop on Digitally Integrated Command and Control Centres under Smart City Mission’ here. The official said the “brain” centres, based on a host of censors connected to a central server, will function as the “eyes” and “ears” of cities, ensuring effective coordination in the functioning of various agencies of urban local bodies. Smart City’s national mission director Samir Sharma said that CCC is being set up in 11 cities — Pune, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Jaipur, Raipur, Naya Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Kakinada. These centres have already become partly operational in Pune and Nagpur. Twenty-three other cities have completed the bidding process for setting up such centres, the release said.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 62


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS

Ford sees big opportunity for smart mobility services in India US auto major Ford Motor Co is looking to tap opportunities in India for its smart mobility services with the government’s push for smart cities providing a good platform, a top company official said.

C

ompany’s arm Ford Smart Mobility LLC will initiate a pilot project of its smart shuttle services involving its employees in Chennai by the end of this year. It has also been in talks with authorities in Indore to provide smart infrastructure as part of mobility services.

“We think India is going to be a fantastic market for mobility services for a number of reasons. The first reason being that the government is initiating a number of programmes to allow cities to experiment with new mobility options,” Ford Smart Mobility (FSM) LLC CEO Rajendra Rao told PTI.

Moreover, he said the ongoing creation of new roads and infrastructure will also call for usage of data to improve schedules and routes for vehicles as well as incentivise people to share.Rao said the company’s team in India will use FSM’s “global playbook” to be utilised to deliver solutions in the country. Citing an example of how it is moving ahead with the strategy, he said the company is looking to start shuttle services developed by San Fransisco-based Chariot, which it had acquired last year, in Chennai by the end of this year.

“We might start doing projects with our employees in Chennai so that we can learn what capabilities we need in India for various things and then take those learnings and apply that in other cities which need them,” Rao added. The shuttle service aims to provide an efficient transportation for users based on data analytics of traffic, number of people travelling from a particular area to the same destination at the same time. Ford has over 11,000 employees in Chennai. He, however, did not specify by when the service could be rolled out commercially in India.

“It is in a very early stage,” he said. Commenting on opportunities in India’s push for smart cities, Rao said: “Our goal is to improve efficiency in the shared mobility space...We have identified a need in India to partner with cities.” He said the company’s team in India will use its global template and use it to deliver solutions in the country.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 63


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS Puducherry Sets Up Spv To Implement Rs 1,827-Crore Smart City Project Puducherry Sets Up Spv To Implement Rs 1,827-Crore Smart City Project

S

The Puducherry government has set up a special purpose vehicle, ‘Puducherry smart city development limited’ to implement the smart city project at a cost of Rs 1,827.82 crore in the Union territory of Puducherry within three years, said chief minister V Narayanasamy.

peaking to reporters on Narayanasamy said the Union government and Puducherry government will extend Rs 500 crore each and the French government will provide a loan of Rs 500 crore for the project. The government will mobilize the balance amount through open market borrowings. He said the special purpose vehicle headed by secretary P Jawahar will function under the guidance of chief secretary Manoj Parida after taking policy decisions

www.UrbanaWorld.com

in consultation with the cabinet. He said company will shortly appoint a separate project management consultant to implement the multicrore project He said Puducherry was ranked eighth in the list of selected cities for the Union government’s ambitious smart city project in the third round of the competition. The Union urban development ministry announced Puducherry’s selection on June 6, 2017. “The previous All India NR

Congress government attempted twice to enrol into the project by submitting a proposal to develop the Sederapet region (in the outskirts of the town). The proposal was rejected twice by the Union government. After the Congress formed the government the proposal was revised focusing development activities within the town limits. The Union government accepted the proposal and selected Puducherry for the project,” said Narayanasamy.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 64


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS

Smartcity kochi settles dispute with consultant

T

Maiden BoD Meeting of Smart City convened

B

oard of directors (BoD) constituted for Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the implementation of Srinagar Smart City Project met under the chairmanship of the commissioner secretary Housing and Urban Development Department, Hirdesh Kumar. The meeting was also attended by the chief executive officer (CEO) of the SPV for the Srinagar Smart City, Dr Farooq Lone, vice chairman Srinagar Development Authority, AM Raina, director Archives and Museums M. S. Zahid, commissioner Srinagar Municipal Corporation Dr. Shafqat Khan and other senior officers. The meeting besides taking several important decisions called for filling up the key posts through proper advertisements so that the process of implementation of the important project can be speeded up. It was also decided that the dedicated website for the project would also be developed as soon as possible.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

he trouble-torn SmartCity-Kochi has settled the dispute with Synergy Property Development Services by paying compensation, including legal expenses, to its Bengaluru-based project management consultant (PMC) which had dragged the IT Special Economic Zone into insolvency proceedings over a payment default.But the troubles faced by the Kakkanad-based SmartCity-Kochi seems far from over as the deal was done without taking its board of directors into confidence. Sources told Express, as per the out-of-court deal with Synergy which filed a case against SmartCity-Kochi in the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), dues worth Rs 1.58 crore will be paid to Synergy, which in turn agreed to forgo the interest component. SmartCity-Kochi will also reimburse the legal expenses incurred by Synergy “in full”. The SmartCity-Kochi has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons following the restructuring at Dubai Holding, which also saw the unceremonious exit of Baju George, the managing director of SmartCity-India and CEO of SmartCity-Kochi. The IT SEZ had Tecom Investments, a subsidiary of Dubai Holding, owning 84 per cent while the Kerala Government held remaining 16 per cent. Later, TECOM Investment as an entity was abolished, and the entire 84 per cent equity stake was transferred to Dubai Holding.

Manoj Nair Is new COO It is learned that Manoj Nair, who has been appointed the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SmartCity-Kochi, is likely to reach out to contractors and consultants, most of whom are unhappy with the work in progress at the IT SEZ.”We had an issue with disruption of water supply, and there is no one to address the issue on the ground. Even for replacing a broken table, they need permission from Dubai. It’s very difficult to work in such a scenario,” said an officer in an IT firm having operations in the SmartCity in Kakkanad. When contacted, Yusuff Ali of Lulu Group said he was a special invitee appointed by the Dubai Government in SmartCity-Kochi and not a full-time board member. “As long as they (the Dubai Government) need my services, I will continue in that role,” he said, refusing further comment.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 65


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS

Up Metro Corporation To Be Set Up: Cm

Uttar Pradesh Metro Corporation will be constituted for starting metro services in various cities of the state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said

www.UrbanaWorld.com

The CM made the announcement while jointly inaugurating with Home Minister Rajnath Singh the maiden run of the Lucknow Metro in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Govenor Ram Naik and other dignitaries. Adityanath also requested metroman E Sridharan to be the principal advisor to the proposed umbrella body which would explore launching metro services in Varanasi, Kanpur, Agra, Moradabad, Allahabad, Meerut, Gorakhpur, Jhansi and other cities.

“In place of separate metro corporations, we will constitute UP Metro Corporation to run metro services in the state,” he said.

T

he corporation will also explore possibilities of mono rail services in some parts of the state. The home minister, who is a Lok Sabha member from Lucknow, said in 2014 he came to know that Public Investment Board gave green signal to the metro services in his constituency. “The smartness of Lucknow has increased after launch of metro services here and it has become a smart city,” he said. He said to ease traffic congestion in the state capital, the work on 104 km ring road has started and it would be completed in next two years. He also remembered former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for getting Shaheed Path constructed in the city.

“I devote this metro service to Vajpayeeji,” he said. Vajpayee represented Lucknow in the Lok Sabha in the past. Elaborating initiatives to ease traffic congestion in the city, Rajnath said, “Four new flyovers will be constructed while a new entry will be opened at Charbagh railway station, where more tracks will be laid and two new platforms will also come up.”

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 66


SMART SMART CiTY NEWS

T

he 8.5-km-long ‘Priority Corridor’ from Transport Nagar to Charbagh, which is part of the Phase 1 of the project, will be operational for the public from 6 am to 10 pm everyday. Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had flagged off the trial run on the same stretch in December last year, just ahead of the assembly elections, to showcase it as a signature project of the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government.

T

he BJP had attacked the Akhilesh government during the assembly election campaign, asking why metro trains were not running in Lucknow. As the matter got embroiled in politics, Akhilesh had shot back saying it was due to the delay in obtaining clearance from the commissioner, Metro Railway Safety, and had blamed the Centre for it.

Akhilesh posted a series of tweets to claim credit for the metro services.

“We had run engine, bogies had to follow,” he tweeted yesterday with pictures of metro inauguration. “Before sitting in metro started by Samajwadis, the government should take care of 5000 stray cattles on roads, he had said in another tweet.

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Kanpur Airport To Be Named After Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today said the Kanpur airport would be named after Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi and Panki railway station would be named as Panki Dham railway station.

U

ttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the Kanpur airport would be named after Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi and Panki railway station would be named as Panki Dham railway station. The chief minister was in Kanpur today where he laid the foundation stone and inaugurated projects worth Rs 850 crore for the city. The chief minister, on the occasion, also laid foundation of nine projects worth Rs 275 crore under the smart city mission project. Adityanath stressed on maintaining quality of the development works, saying it was necessry to give a momentum to the states development. The chief minister said that his government was seriously working on cleaning of all the major rivers, including Ganga, and making them pollution free.

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 67


SUBSCRIBE Subscribe “Urbana World” at www.UrbanaWorld.com or fill your complete address and Email to : gazalakhan.eq@ gmail.com or Call 0731 4222268

Yes! I would like to Subscribe to Urbana World Magazine For 1 Issue:

o Indian citizens Rs. 200

o International $ 25 / € 20

For 1 Year (6 issues):

o Indian citizens Rs. 1000

o International $ 140 / € 110

Please Mail the coupon to: Name:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Job Title:----------------------------------------------------------------------------Department: -----------------------------------------------------------------------Company:---------------------------------------------------------------------------Description of the Company: ------------------------------------------------Adress:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------City/State/Zip Code:-------------------------------------------------------------Country:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Phone:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fax:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------E-Mail. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Web site:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PAYMENT 1.- My Cheque/DD in favour of “FirstSource Energy India Private Limited”

for Rs……………………………………………………………………

Drawn on………………………………………is enclosed herewith.

Date/Signature: 2.- I will pay by Credit Card Type:...........................................................................

Name on Card:..............................................................

Number:.......................................................................

Security Code: ..............................................................

Expiration Date:.............................................................

Mail this coup on to: FirstSource Energy India Pvt. Ltd. Subscription Department. 95-C, Sampat Farms, Bicholi Mardana. Indore 452 016. Madhya Pradesh. India

" www.UrbanaWorld.com

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 68


India’s Leading Smart City Magazine Urbana World is India’s Leading B2B Media on Smart Cities. Urbana aims to serve the industry’s key stakeholders & government officials with daily newsletter, conferences, infographics, interviews, etc. Urbana publishes bi-monthly magazine, daily e-Newsletter & website- containing Policy & Regulatory Regime, Product Launches, Case Studies, Technical Articles, etc.

be i r c s b Su y... Toda Saumya Gupta EDITOR Mail ID : saumya@urbanamagazine.com Phone : +91 9575499990

www.UrbanaWorld.com

Rahul Rai Nigam Marketing Communications

Prasoon Agrawal PR & Buisness Development Manager

Mail ID : rahul.nigam@eqmag.net Phone : +91 731 4222268

Mail ID : prasoon.agrawal@eqmag.net Phone : +91 96440 94933

URBANA WORLD May-June 2017 69


R.N.I. NO. MPBIL/2015/61352 | DATE OF PUBLICATION: May-June 20


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.